this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2024
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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 Rhone 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.

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[–] [email protected] 148 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (7 children)

My dad thinks climate change is a scam and "someone [i]s making a lot of money from it"

My dad also laments that the local lake doesn't freeze over like it did when he was a teenager, DRIVING on top of it with his brothers.

Totally unrelated to climate change though. Cause that's totes fake.

Also storms are more violent and frequent, winters are basically spring 2.0 now and the local river has flooded way past historic levels and could threaten the downtown area of their city within the decade.

But all that is SOOOOOOO unrelated.

[–] jubilationtcornpone 51 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The cognitive dissonance is so strange to me. I'm a native Cheesehead and it's a well documented fact that ice fishing season in Wisconsin is quickly getting shorter and shorter due to the higher winter temperatures.

Maybe it's a branding issue. What if we start referring to "climate change" as "demise of ice fishing" or "imminent collapse of the snowmobile industry"?

[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 months ago

imminent collapse of the snow industry

That should make the tourism industry get their lobbying straight.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 3 months ago (2 children)

He is partially right - there are people making a lot of money from climate change... Or at least from causing it

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (2 children)

To be fair there are also a lot of 'green' company scams out there too. Grifters are everywhere

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

I would say "some", not "a lot". Unless you know about way more "green" scams than I'm aware of.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Yup, and it has a name - Greenwashing.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

That’s capitalism for you: one company makes money creating the problem and another fixing it! It’s double-pumped!

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago (1 children)

A thousand year event, every year.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago

The hottest day on record every year

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

That sounds like some northern Minnesota things lol

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Talked to a random farmer last week:
"Weather is unpredictable, so wet, then hot, then cold. I need to work 36 hours straight or our hay will get wet. But I gotta feed my cows. Well, I guess this is just how it is, right?"
I really didn't know what to say to him. Evaporation, water cycle, soil compaction, diesel, methan, milk? He wouldn't even try to understand any of this. I don't want to become one of the cynical "we are fucked"-people. Everyone can change something in their lifes.

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[–] [email protected] 76 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Don't worry. Some people I know can still go skiing, so clearly it's all fake and a non-issue.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I've seen a guy hold a snowball on TV. We're fine.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago (1 children)

In case you have felt the world be a little lighter recently, he died a month ago: https://lemmy.world/post/17387694

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Rarely do I celebrate people's deaths, but in some cases I do. 🎉

[–] [email protected] 65 points 3 months ago (1 children)

"It won't happen in our lifetimes"

guess what mfers

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I believe climate change deniers changed their tune from "it's not happening" to "it happened before, so what's the problem?" Most people believe in man-made climate change, but deniers want people to feel powerless and hopeless, and succumb to the system of continuous consumption of finite resources under capitalism.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Maybe we need analogies for what is happening that they can understand e.g. "sure, houses have burned down before...and some rooms in the house didn't burn, so you can still live in them...but usually you get off your butt and fire-proof your curtains and paint and help your upstairs and downstairs neighbour, because if you don't maybe their irresponsibility will make your insurance premium rise..."

[–] [email protected] 42 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I tried to do the same thing at Franz Josef glacier earlier this year. I didn't even get the glacier in shot.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Is that the one that says "the glacier may look like this [picture] in 2100 if global warming keeps happening" and the glacier is noticeably more receded than that?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yes. Was there 7 years ago and it had already receded way past the 2100 pic.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Fuck that’s depressing

If only all the scientists could have predicted all of this. Maybe even tried to warn us about it and write it in signs.

Stupid scientists..

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

It's not the scientists fault, it's the Prussians who focused more on arms and military than social security nets and infrastructure. It's all been down hill since then

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Switzerland has always been the go to holiday destination for my grandparents, parents and now me. The difference in pictures (and memories) between the generations is terrifying

[–] [email protected] 36 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Reminds me of an economist who was telling everyone that a few degrees of climate change would barely cost 1% of economic growth so it would not be an issue at all. The climate scientists replied that at -4°C there was a mile of ice at the spot he was sitting and you would think that this would surely affect the economy, and that +4°C would have similar results.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 months ago

I'm sure a lot of the comments on other platforms would say something along the lines of "They obviously took one picture in the summer and one in the winter... 😒 But enjoy your antifa money 🤣🤣🤣"

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I always thought the Mer de Glace at the Mont Blanc illustrates this really well. You arrive and there's a sign "the glacier was here in 1910" and that's where tourists back then.

To get to the actual glacier, you have to eall down many flights of metal stairs for about half an hour and there's several signs for different years, 1950, 1990, 2002, 2006, 2009, 2012, 2014, 2015, something like this, with the years between each sign getting shorter but the distance staying roughly the same. And from the top it's really far away.

Of course, once you actually reach the glacier, you get to the main attraction, a 3m diameter tunnel they bored 100m deep into it as a tourist attraction with ice sculptures inside. Above the tunnel you can see the remains of the tunnel from the previous year, half melted...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

I first went in 2013, you had to climb down quite a long flight of steps to get to it.

Went this summer, and there's an actual gondola 🚡 to take you down to it, then 400 steps down after that

Actually horrifying

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago

Chasing Ice remains a terrific documentary that clearly showed all of this happening 15 years ago.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

the post also attracted a steady stream of comments from climate denying-accounts subscribed to X’s premium service, many of which were abusive and misrepresented established climate science

My god

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

to the surprise of noone

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Yeah, we'll deal with it when it affects us personally! Not like nature will just brush us away..right?

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