We can use a 'Columbus miracle'...

OK, so computer models and scientists have shown for decades that we are nearing fuel and sustenance shortages, and extremely inconvenient climate change. Now the Great Depression II, the biggest oil spill in world history, and the warmest yearly temperatures in modern history, are reminding us on a daily basis.

What to do? Perhaps anything, with gumption!

When Christopher Columbus approached the Spanish elite to request voyaging funds, the question of the time wasn't whether the world was flat. That is a myth that was dissolved centuries earlier. What was in question at the time was the size of the Earth and the distance to Asia across the Atlantic.

Columbus did his best regarding nautical calculations, but his results were so absurd that the Spanish geographers of the time insisted the Genoan's voyage would be catastrophic. Why? Because Columbus estimated that the distance to Japan would be only 5000km, when in fact it is 20000km! The Spanish may not have known the exact distance either; but they did know that Columbus wasn't even close.

Convincing Queen Isabella notwithstanding, Columbus and his crews sailed west and barely made in to the Carribean before the Spanish geographers predictions started manifesting:

Disease; starvation; mutiny! Thus Columbus was utterly wrong and would have rightly been considered a Custer of his time...had not the Americas been 'miraculously' sitting in the middle of the ocean between Europe and Asia.

Despite his colossal mathematical errors, Columbus is today feted as (one of) the discoverers of the Americas; and he carries one of the most popularly used names of all time: think Columbia University; Columbus, Ohio...The moral of this story?

Perhaps it is to keep seeking a solution and maybe things will work out all right even if all the key players involved are incompetent (BP? MMS?). Sometimes a continent appears in the middle of an ocean; sometimes oil is discovered and fuels an entire century or two; sometimes (cold fusion; tesla free energy; aliens to the rescue) something else happens to 'save our souls' in the nick of time...