I though one of the huge raps against Democrats and liberals is that they (we) tend to communicate in policy terms, facts and figures, while the other side gut punches with emotion. We freeze people's brains, they glaze over, while Republicans message requires no thought whatsoever, and is hence much more effective.

So tonight Olbermann talks about life and death, and about his dad, who he clearly loves. And what's the complaint? He's not providing quantitative comparisons of legislation? My God!

The first rule in public debate is to engage the audience. Olbermann did an admirable job of it. And for all the trolls above calling Obermann names, you all look pretty petty.

Prices are not likely to move smoothly or predictably. There are bottlenecks in the system, such as oil refinery capacity, that can cap production capacity of usable fuel no matter how much crude is produced. Further, there are physical pinch-points that can cut transportation enough to make a difference (a hurricane hitting Houston, a battle in the Strait of Hormuz, an attack on Saudi port facilities). So instead of prices moving steadily upward as the cost of getting the supply increases, the last few years of $2 gas followed by $4 gas followed by $2 gas may be more common. In that situation, there are financial impediments in bringing new technologies online, because of the uncertainty of profits.

I can predict with confidence though that there will still be, even through midcentury, plenty of politicians bellowing about how we should just let the markets do their magic and all will be well...

Of the $40 to buy a LED lamp, how much is due to materials unique to the lamp itself, how much is due to electronics, and how much is due to labor?

I'm guessing that with very small markets, the labor component is high. If so, that can be greatly reduced on a per-unit basis. If however the cost of the LED materials is high (owing to the difficult multi-material tight-tolerance fabrication of the blue diode), that will not come down quickly.

Also a comparison with the cost of CFL versus time would be instructive. If I remember correctly, they used to be north of $10 apiece in the early days, and often had crappy electronics to convert the line current into stable discharge-lamp power, resulting in a too-high failure rate. All that has since improved substantially, but I doubt that CFLs will ever crash below $1 each.

Long past time, of course, but we only have the present to work in and the past is forever past. So let's, yes, get it done.

And you get better quickly and stay well for a long time. There's more writing to be done, you know!

that he was quoting Kathleen Parker (from the comments section following the column - on a different page of the WaPo site).

That's what the small size text means in Mother Jones blog format - it's a blockquote. And Kevin did a service in redacting some stuff. Think about it - would he write that sentence starting in "Jim Webb" and indicate the precise length of text he was redacting if he never intended to post it? Also it was a tease to the reader...if you wanted to see what Parker had written, go to the comments.

in the list of great discoveries. The computers we are all using would never have come about without understanding the electronic band structure of silicon.

As for Hiroshima, I would argue that it in the net saved lives, if by trading Japanese civilians for Japanese and American soldiers, and eventually Japanese civilians anyway. It's war that is the tragedy. The bomb, and its use and consequences, caused politicians and military leaders to, at least so far, never use it again. Hopefully, the terror of science reaches a limit while the beauty of science can grow.

Suppose at some future date Puerto Rico becomes the 51st state. Then would anybody from Puerto Rico be eligible to become President? Would there have to be a clock setting before allowing any politician - they would get two Senators, plus they have a Governor - from seeking the presidency? This of course connects to the Barry Goldwater case (born in Arizona Territory).

"Natural Born" is awfully ambiguous at the edges.

First, be careful in posing the question as space versus climate. Despite our woefully low elevation above sea level, there are a lot of folks here in east Central Florida who are very intimately connected to NASA and manned space flight. And lots of businesses and communities that depend on those high-wage earners. You don't convince people of the righteousness of your cause by threatening their bread and butter.

Second, Apollo and global warming are very different beasts. Apollo was above all a political endeavor - put the Stars and Stripes on the moon before the Hammer and Sickle, declare victory and quit. Sadly so, because as a kid myself those days, I was severely let down when it became apparent that we were not going to continue and expand our moon program like all my sci-fi books and television shows told me we were.

With global warming, there will be no flag-planting photo moment. It's a long slow fight along a thousand fronts, and like turning an ocean liner, results come with a long lag time and arc slowly in their effects.

And then of course there's the world-wide scope of the problem. We could go to the moon on our own, just the US. No need to confront foreign rapidly-industrializing nations with twice or three times our population and one-tenth our per capita GDP. No need to convince deep-pocketed multinational energy companies that what they perceive as their bread and butter needs to change, and quickly.

The best part of your post, and the most salable, is that carbon-free energy will be hugely profitable and will confer power to the nation that leads its development.