<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/06/it-made-me-cry-photos-taken-15-years-apart-show-melting-swiss-glaciers>
"A tourist has posted “staggering” photos of himself and his wife at the same
spot in the Swiss Alps almost exactly 15 years apart, in a pair of photos that
highlight the speed with which global heating is melting glaciers.
Duncan Porter, a software developer from Bristol, posted photos that were taken
in the same spot at the Rhône glacier in August 2009 and August 2024. The white
ice that filled the background has shrunk to reveal grey rock. A once-small
pool at the bottom, out of sight in the original, has turned into a vast green
lake.
“Not gonna lie, it made me cry,” Porter said in a viral post on social media
platform X on Sunday night.
Porter and his wife had taken the original photo from a viewpoint by a “Wes
Anderson-style” hotel that has since shut, and hung it up in their kitchen.
Eager to return to the mountains and let their teenage daughters Maisie and
Emily see the glacier, they took a camper van trip across Europe and set out to
recreate the picture.
“But obviously the circumstance of this photo was drastically different,” said
Porter. Helen Porter, a nurse, added: “I thought it was really unbelievable.”
The carbon pollution released by burning fossil fuels and destroying nature has
heated the planet 1.3C since preindustrial times. In Europe, which has warmed
twice as fast as the global average, hotter summers have forced people in
mountainous regions to see slow-moving glaciers melt before their eyes.
Switzerland has lost one-third of its glacier volume since 2000, according to
official statistics, and 10% has disappeared in the last two years alone.
“A lot of people, when they see something like that, they feel quite helpless,”
said Porter, who sits on the committee of a local climate action group in the
south-west of England. “But from my experience there’s a huge amount they can
do.”
He said he did “not want to sound preachy” but pointed to local community
projects as one of the “wonderful” ways in which ordinary people can get
involved in climate action, along with pushing for systemic change through the
ways they vote and shop."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
