And while scientific consensus on the causes and mitigating measures for climate change is considerable and the impacts of global warming foreseeable, governments can seem like rabbits caught between two oncoming sets of headlights, one beaming the message 'stimulate economic growth', the other 'reduce carbon emissions'.
One of the most valuable functions of his "Ultralight Beam" verse is the message that if you believe in something hard enough and dedicate your life to it, you will be rewarded.
But all day Iranian state television beamed the opposite message to its domestic audience, insisting that Iran was waiting for Russia and France to sell it new nuclear fuel for a reactor in Tehran that makes medical isotopes.
The ability to deploy, without expert knowledge, a whole suite of information tools has allowed protesters across the world to outwit the police, to beam their message into the newsrooms of global media, and above all to assert a cool, cutting-edge identity in the face of what WH Auden once called "the elderly rubbish dictators talk".
The message, beamed from a 13-kilowatt station in what was once the storeroom of a housing project, reaches at most a few hundred homes.
But given the raw mood in the Arab world, the message beamed around Bahrain and indeed throughout the region was that the Americans were openly siding with the Israelis, even in death.
But words alone cannot solve the policy puzzle being played out in the nation's capital, because so far, the message beamed from Austin to Washington has been stark and familiar.
But the message beamed back home to American voters was not the one he wanted.
But that doesn't mean she is one for ambiguity: On Friday, the atheist Freedom From Religion Foundation unveiled a Times Square billboard featuring Sweeney's beaming image along with the message, "OMG, there is no god!" PHOTOS: Hollywood Backlot moments.
Events such as the auction, which was beamed around the world, reinforce the message.
