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!

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.

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...

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.