Regarding the part that I bolded above, I am a little bit unclear about your apparent desire to be combative on these various points.  It is like you are buying into some kind of argument that bitcoin is in a state of emergency and that there's got to be a hardfork, or else we are screwed.

Hello?  How could there have to be a hardfork in order to achieve a technological limitations issue... That 1mb versus 2mb technological change is likely not a big deal, and there seems to be absolutely no need for a hardfork in order to achieve such technological change.

In fact, it appears that the ONLY reason for a hard fork, rather than a soft fork, is because one part is trying to force the issue and therefore to cause some kind of precedent for being able to make emergency changes via non-consensus, and there is no need to force any issue because a large majority already agrees more or less that an increase will be needed at some point.  There is no rush to create a timeline blah blah blah.. because seg wit is right around the corner, and seg wit should be incorporated first in order to see how that plays out, and thereafter, after seg wit has been incorporated for a few months, then likely there can be additional and/or lengthy investigation into the impact and possibly even a timeline for causing some kind of block size increase, and again no need to hard fork such a decision, unless you are attempting to take away consensus decision making and to attempt to rule from a smaller group of peeps.