Update #1, Aug. 20, 8:48 am: I have deleted my embarrassing post from my blog with no retraction. Screenshots of the original post available here.

My name is Tony Heller (aka Steven Goddard). I’m a professional climate change denier and I use this blog to blow the whistle on myself and sometimes others, too. Today, we’re going to demonstrate once again just how embarrassingly unqualified I am to discuss anything to do with climate change.

Our story begins on the western coast of Greenland, 220 miles north of the Arctic Circle and 40 miles east of a coastal village called Ilulissat. There, the Jakobshavn Glacier drains massive shards of ice flowing off the land into a narrow channel of water about five miles wide known as the Ilulissat Icefjord. From there, the ice slowly dissolves as it gets funneled 40 miles westward into the Disko Bay and then ultimately into its watery grave in the Arctic Ocean.

As glaciers go, the Jakobshavn is quite remarkable. It’s one of the fastest moving glaciers on the planet, moving at a rate of 150 feet per day. It empties out 6.5% of all the ice flowing off Greenland, or 35 billion tons per year. But the Jakobshavn isn’t as mighty as it once was. Over the past 150 years or so, it has withdrawn far to the east. At one time the glacier covered more well over half the length of Ilulissat Icefjord. But now the large share of the channel lies naked to the world save for the giant, floating chunks of ice it carries out to sea. As the image below shows, the rate of retreat of the glacier has been alarming, especially over the last 20 years.

Today, the Jakobshavn made headlines when of the Washington Post reported that observers of satellite images believe that a massive chunk of the glacier calved, causing it to retreat even further up the channel. Of course, knowing instinctively that all liberals reporting on climate change are liars, I immediately hit them with a tweet calling them morons:

Calving has nothing to do with melt. @washingtonpost being total morons again. https://t.co/gVjENgohMJ — Steve Goddard (@SteveSGoddard) August 19, 2015

Next, I got to work on a blog post to show the world just what these scumbags were up to. I knew just where to get recent satellite imagery of the glacier. Using my highly honed computer skills, I took screenshots of the glacier before and after it supposedly calved and created this masterful animation:

Any idiot could now see that the glacier had actually grown, not shrunk! How did these morons think I would not catch their blatant lies? “The entire premise of their story is intended to mislead their readers,” I wrote on my blog post. “The Washington Post is just one more link in the climate fraud mafia.” Brilliant! I quickly posted a comment on the Post’s comment section to let the world know that l had caught them in brazen deception:

But, there was just one small problem. I thought the white mass in the Ilulissat Icefjord from the satellite picture was the glacier, but it was really just floating sea ice. What I thought was the end of the glacier on the left side of the photo wasn’t the glacier at all. The glacier ended 40 miles to the east in the right hand side of my animation. Oops! If I had bothered to read this article the Post had linked to I might have noticed the calving was the extreme eastern end of the Ilulissat Icefjord. But I didn’t. Doh!

It wasn’t long before someone caught my amateur mistake:

@SteveSGoddard @washingtonpost Steve, honest question, where do you see the glacier expanding in this gif? —

Dan Tank (@Climb8Junkie) August 19, 2015

I hadn’t yet realized what an ass I was so I confidently wrote back:

@Climb8Junkie @washingtonpost Look at the terminus of the glacier. It has expanded about 100 meters on the north side. —

Steve Goddard (@SteveSGoddard) August 19, 2015

To which my follower replied:

@SteveSGoddard @washingtonpost The calving occurred in the extreme right hand side of the gif, though. See neven1.typepad.com/.a/6a0133f03a1… —

Dan Tank (@Climb8Junkie) August 19, 2015

Still thinking I was right and this guy didn’t know what he was talking about:

@Climb8Junkie @washingtonpost Calving occurs at the sea. —

Steve Goddard (@SteveSGoddard) August 19, 2015

My follower still insisted he was right:

@SteveSGoddard @washingtonpost Right. The link to the photo I sent you shows the ice falling into sea at east side of fjord. —

Dan Tank (@Climb8Junkie) August 19, 2015

Finally, I clicked on the link to the photo showing the retreat of the glacier. But even then, I still did not figure out where the actual glacier in the picture was and proceeded to create a new animation comparing the glacier in 2013 to the glacier in 2015.

@Climb8Junkie @washingtonpost Thanks for bringing 2013 to my attention. The glacier has grown 1km since 2013 http://t.co/VTGntXR5mj —

Steve Goddard (@SteveSGoddard) August 19, 2015

My follower, looking at the right hand side of the photo pointed out the clouds over the east end of the photo.

@SteveSGoddard @washingtonpost Well, it looks like there's some cloud cover there. Hard to tell. —

Dan Tank (@Climb8Junkie) August 19, 2015

But still not realizing where the glacier was, I wrote confusedly:

My follower tried to clear it up for me again:



@SteveSGoddard @washingtonpost Clouds in extreme right side of photo obscure where glacier ends. —

Dan Tank (@Climb8Junkie) August 19, 2015

And again:



@SteveSGoddard @washingtonpost I think you might be looking at the left side of the gif. That's not the glacier. That's ice in water. —

Dan Tank (@Climb8Junkie) August 19, 2015

And again:



@SteveSGoddard @washingtonpost Do you see what I'm talking about? —

Dan Tank (@Climb8Junkie) August 19, 2015

And then it finally dawned on me. Fuck! I’m going to look like an idiot! I started to panic. I quickly removed the post from my website. But then commenters on the Washington Post called me out for that:

I ended up on republishing the post but I quietly removed it from the home page and hoped no one would notice. As the commenter from the Washington Post pointed out, I would never issue a retraction and never replied to my follower. I just quietly slinked off, hoping no one would notice.

@SteveSGoddard @washingtonpost Steve? There? You might want to edit your post. I think you might end up with egg on your face here. —

Dan Tank (@Climb8Junkie) August 19, 2015

Turns out I was wrong on that count, too.

For other tales of Tony Heller ineptitude, visit this page. Hat tip to “Nevena” for the heads up on this great find.