Tony Heller and the Fabrication of History

From Garavaglia et al 2012

Sociologically speaking, Tony Heller is a fascinating person. I mean, he's ridiculous, but in debate groups, it's not uncommon to see people defending his claims despite incontrovertible evidence that he's wrong. Some of this may have to do with his rhetoric. He begins every video he makes informing you that he's the sole authority on climate, and in almost every video he at some point will refer to climate scientists as liars, frauds, and criminals. In a recent video, though, he decided to take this a step further and start mocking random people on Twitter for being sad about the retreat of mountain glaciers. This was based on a news story by CNN reporting that WWI artifacts were found in a cave in Northern Italy. Climate change has recently made it possible to enter that cave and discover these artifacts. Heller imagined that the reason why that cave was able to be used during WWI was because the was no ice there then. After WWI, we're told, glaciers advanced, then retreated, we discovered the cave, and the glacier is larger now than it was 100 years ago. And so, of course, climate scientists are frauds.

The history behind this is fascinating. I found a very interesting NatGeo article [1] about the “White War” and the efforts used by both sides of the war effort. It turns out that during WWI mountain glaciers existed all over the area, and the cave was used as a shelter because soldiers dug through the glacial ice to construct it. They actually made huge networks of tunnels through the ice, even constructing a "city" of sorts within the glaciers. According to NatGeo, "On Marmolada, the highest mountain in the Dolomites, the Austrian Corps of Engineers built an entire ‘ice city’—a complex of tunnels, dormitories, and storerooms dug out of the bowels of the glacier." 

So here’s what actually happened. During WWI there were so many mountain glaciers that the cave was only accessible because of the tunnels that were built through the glacial ice. Soldiers dug tunnels and excavated areas to support the war effort during WWI. After the war was over, the glaciers continued flowing, and the tunnels were destroyed, blocking off access to these artifacts. They remained covered by glaciers since then - that is, until climate change melted the glaciers enough so that people could access them again. We know this because scientists can estimate how glaciers have responded to climate change over the last 100 years. Here’s a study [2] I found about the Forni Glacier, in Stelvio National Park, which is perhaps ~50 mi from where the cave was found. The evidence shows a steady retreat of the glacier with the exception of a small advance between 1970 and 1985. The study notes that the behavior of this glacier is representative of other glaciers in the region. The glaciers in the area have been in retreat since before WWI, and Heller fabricated his own contrarian history to suit the narrative he's selling, at the expense of random people on Twitter who are only to blame for giving a damn.

This of course is not the only time that Heller has been demonstrably and obviously wrong. He's frequently misinformed, and on one occasion I commented on his blog about it. He wrongly claimed that over 3 years, Greenland had gained 1.2 trillion tons of ice. He said that by reporting only surface mass balance (SMB) as if it was total mass balance (TMB), but he ignored discharge (D) from glacial calving. In each of those three years D exceeded SMB, so Greenland actually lost ice every single one of those years. You can see his response to my comment where he simply refuses to admit he was wrong.[3]

Which brings up a larger question. Why do people listen to him? How does he get such a large following? I don't have a whole lot of answers to that question, and so I'll fall back on the obvious explanations that are perhaps at least part of the answer. Many of us like a good conspiracy, and many of us are more than willing to believe what's told to us if it confirms what we suspect anyway. We are easily susceptible to confirmation bias, and we all need to watch out for motivated reasoning. And while it may be easy to see why Heller and his followers have gone off the rails, it's more difficult for us to see in ourselves how we might be doing something similar on a smaller scale. Let Heller be a (bad) example for us all: do your homework before telling what simply amounts to fabrications and lies, and never follow anyone's ideas blindly without checking on what he says (including me).

Referencees:

[1] Michele Gravino, “A Century Later, Relics Emerge From a War Frozen in Time.” https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/141017-white-war-first-world-war-italy-austro-hungarian-mountains-history

[2] Garavaglia, V., Diolaiuti, G., Smiraglia, C. et al. Evaluating Tourist Perception of Environmental Changes as a Contribution to Managing Natural Resources in Glacierized Areas: A Case Study of the Forni Glacier (Stelvio National Park, Italian Alps). Environmental Management 50, 1125–1138 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-012-9948-9

[3] https://realclimatescience.com/2019/08/greenland-melt-season-ends-1-2-trillion-tons-of-new-ice-since-2016/