So, "Most places, in fact, are better off being warmer than being colder." Well, not if you live in Bangladesh, or Shanghai, or even Florida (or New Orleans). Also, things might get a little problematic if you live in a city along a glacial-fed river, like the Mekong (featured on NBC News tonight) - already, salt water is leaching upstream because of the diminished river flow.

Further, since we have already increased the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere far above anything experienced naturally in the last three-quarters of a million years, who is to say that that temperature increases will come slowly enough, or be moderate enough in magnitude, for humans and all other life to cope, at least without really catastrophic harm and death. In fact, it is precisely the fact that we do not know the full extent of the consequences of the experiment we are performing that generates alarm in reasonable people. Maybe we'll luck out. But maybe we won't. And the bet is the ultimate in high-stakes wagers.

There is something I really don't understand about Dyson. Back almost thirty years ago, I read his lengthy article in a review journal (I believe Reviews of Modern Physics) where he scoped out the long-term evolution of the universe, with time scales of stars, planetary systems, galaxies, and longest of all, the eventual slow evaporation of black holes through Hawking radiation. (This was long before the discoveries of "dark matter" and "dark energy", which changes the picture quite a bit.) So how, I wonder, is anyone capable of thinking that broadly - to time scales of order of the year 10 to the 100th power - the same person that is now so glib about the future and its potential problems in just the next century?

He strikes me like some disconnected reporter or economist, talking about the loss of jobs to globalization, without even sensing that families get torn apart, people go crazy and do violent things, and society gets meaner as a result. Just "collateral damage" I guess.

over Clinton and Obama. It's his last run for the White House. He ran in 2004, now again. If he doesn't win, he's this century's Harold Stassen if he should try again, and he knows he won't go that route. This is not true for Clinton, and certainly not true for the young Obama.

This is an advantage because he need not calculate, triangulate, or hedge - with the eye on a future run, or (in my opinion) as Senator Clinton does now with an eye on the General Election. Caution be damned. What you see is what you get. And relief from constraints is a good way to run for office. Cubs or Yankees, Senator Clinton? What's that you say - a little of both?

I'm glad you shone a beam of light on the insular and gossipy world of Beltway insider elites, and the "journalists" that orbit them. If were to happen that Edwards went all the way and got elected, I have no doubt that David Broder's first column would say "This [Washington] is not his place. It's our place..."

of the commenters here, I would say that we have to understand why this state of affairs has come about - not to apologize for it, but to find ways to make it better.

Congress critters, and Senators especially, are mostly free agents, herds of cats. They can be tugged by the likes of the DCCC and DSCC and activist groups, but by and large, incumbents are secure and have their own war chests. Doubly problematic for the Democrats, lacking a President, there is no highly visible party leader setting the agenda. Contrast this with Parliamentary democracies, where the out-of-power party has a shadow cabinet and a shadow Prime Minister.

And, face it, Members of Congress have outsized egos and connect their personal self-esteem to their office. The prospect of losing raises huge anxiety that is partly, to them, existential. Fear comes when you cannot rely on your colleague to cover your backside. That's what keeps the conventional wisdom and the commonly-held boundaries of discourse in place.

That's why the House Dems lose proportionately fewer "blue dogs" and the like on votes than the Senate, where the spotlight is greater and the average tenure is decades.

So how to fix the situation? A Democratic President will be a huge, huge step. He or she will be the one on TV news every night, quoted on Page A1 right column, and will set the agenda. Congressional Democrats will then be constrained to make modifications at the edges, rather than going off on their own tangents. If the Democratic Presidential nominee campaigns hard on asking the people to elect a Democratic Congress - not just the candidate from the campaign stop's local district - so as to make bold change with him or her (I can't remember when that last happened), there is a chance that good will can bind both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue at least long enough to make significant qualitative changes that are long overdue.

The next president can be a great one, precisely because they will be faced with enormous inherited problems. I do fear - I guess echoing the author - that the lesser spirits of just winning, settling for half a loaf, can blow an historic opportunity in 2008.