Virtually the entire environmental community showed a blatant disregard for the science and the facts, leading to an overblown forecast of the impact of the BP oil spill on the Gulf Coast.

All the observable factors which would serve to mitigate the spill’s impact were ignored by the hand-wringing greenies. The press cooperated, parroting dire predictions of oil fouling the entire Gulf Coast and possibly the Atlantic Coast, too. Life on the coast might never be the same!

Less than four months into the spill, however, and the Louisiana marsh is recovering, in the same growing season. Only 350 acres of marsh were oiled, compared to the 15,000 acres that erode per year.

The greens’ politics trumped their commitment to scientific truth. Their mistake was in making predictions that could be proven true or false over a short period of time — about three months, as it turns out.

That’s where the Climate Change community has the upper hand. Their predictions are long-term and hard to verify. And they have the latitude to move the goalposts at will.

Nonetheless, the BP spill and its interplay between the environmentalists and their willing accomplices in the press justify and reinforce my Climate Science skepticism.

Consider the parallels.

In both cases, you have a scientific establishment whose politics trumps its science. Much of the environmental movement starts from an implicit anti-development, anti-industry perspective. Ditto Climate Change. Funny how their “scientific” conclusions always confirm, and never refute, their politics.

In both cases, you have a complicit, gullible and scientifically illiterate journos feeding on the scientists for juicy headline fodder. They are savvy enough businessmen to realize that the narrative “The Sky Is Falling!!!” sells more papers and attracts more viewers than “More of the Same Tomorrow”.

In both cases, you have governmental entities that gain power from the junk science. The BP spill is a pretext to kill industry, punish red states and encroach on state authority. In the case of Climate Change, not just the EPA but also the U.N. stand to extend their spheres of influence.

The EPA and NOAA are the lead government agencies for data collection and evaluation for both phenomena.

Both events are an excuse to raise the cost of conventional energy sources, thereby decreasing their cost and efficiency advantages over renewable energy sources.

If the scientific shortcomings, the revelations of Climategate and demonstrated groupthink in the Climate Change community weren’t enough to make you skeptical, maybe the parallels with the failed forecasts of the BP spill will do the trick.

Cross-posted at RedState.com.