That everyone was so wrong about the impact that BP’s hydrocarbons would have on the ocean should give those who believe in scientific consensus second thought. Nature is more resilient, more powerful, more adaptive, and more complex than most people believe.

“There was a lot of doomsday talk,” said microbiologist David Valentine, in reference to the 2010 explosion at BP’s Deepwater Horizon site in the Gulf of Mexico.

Doomsday talk seemed reasonable. 200,000 tons of methane gas and 4.4 million barrels of petroleum gushed into an ocean rich with complex, and supposedly fragile, biology. The media spoke about the devastating long-term effects that the oil and gas would impose upon the underwater ecosystems.

News reports and scientists feared that the mass of hydrocarbons in the Gulf would catch a current that would bring it around the southern tip of Florida and up the east coast. Environmentalists, anti-Oilists, and populists, teamed up to condemn BP and bemoan the corporate assault on nature.

That 200,000 tons (400 million pounds) of gas and 4.4 million barrels would devastate marine life was not taken as scientific proposition; it was (reasonably) taken as fact.

But Dr. Valentine’s co-authored study, which was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, says that “the [Gulf of Mexico’s] water currents don’t flow in a single direction as in a river. Instead, the water sloshes around, back and forth, as if it were trapped in a washing machine.” This laundry effect broke up plumes of oil into sizes that the ocean could more easily manage.

Bacterial microbes then attached to and fed on the hydrocarbons even as the oil and gas was pulled apart by the tugging currents. Turns out that nature has microorganisms that eat oil. Who knew?

It’s little surprise that we generally view nature as a brittle beauty; global warmism, still hot in pop culture and academia, relies on this in order to retain its (declining) popularity. Polar bears stranded in the middle of the ocean on a tiny plank of ice; sheets of ice helplessly falling into the water because of above-freezing temperatures; plumes of human pollutant unceasingly pouring into the skies. These are images of nature that most elementary, high school, and college students have encountered.

If journalists, politicians, scientists, activists, and activist scientists admitted that nature is amazingly powerful, convincing Americans that humanity is destroying nature would be a difficult task. The left’s deification of nature is a bit odd: the nature deity is pure, beautiful, and wise. But it is defenseless against the capitalist, who does not hesitate to despoil the environment in order to increase earnings per share by 3%.

This belief would be tolerable if it were not used to rationalize the transformation of how industrialized nations move vehicles and heat homes. Global warming—the theory that scientifically asserts that earth is dangerously warming due to human carbon dioxide emissions—rests on the unscientific idea that the theory is a consensus amongst climatologists. And doubters of the consensus are the modern version of the Catholic Church silencing Galileo.

But Galileo challenged the scientific and religious establishment and was threatened for it. Distinguished scientists who defy the global warming “consensus”, such as MIT meteorologist Richard Lindzen, are looked down upon and stand less of a chance of receiving government grants. Grants tend to find scientists who believe in global warming. Language such as “consensus” and “deniers” underscores that many global warmists are insecure about challenges to the prevailing theory; similar to the Church’s insecurity regarding challenges to Earth’s physical centrality in relation to other planets.

That everyone was so wrong about the impact that BP’s hydrocarbons would have on the ocean should give those who believe in scientific consensus second thought. Particularly if the consensus is one that is believed by Hollywood, academia, and media alike, a trifecta not exactly known for its prophetic abilities. Nature is more resilient, more powerful, more adaptive, and more complex than most people believe. That the environment surprised almost everybody in withstanding the oil spill suggests that it can also survive carbon dioxide emissions.