Married couple from Bristol attract awe and abuse on X with photos that show ‘staggering’ changes in the Alps

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.

  • remer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    617·
    1 month ago

    There is clearly a catastrophic amount of melting but the perspective, both angle and zoom, exaggerate the melting here. The older photo is more zoomed in and has the mountains higher in the frame. That gives the anti-environmental people something to work with to attempt to discredit the melting.

    • Tiresia@slrpnk.netEnglish
      201·
      1 month ago

      I put together this gif for a side-by-side comparison. The picture was taken from a slightly different location, so it’s not perfect, but the difference is obvious.

    • BrikoX@lemmy.zipEnglish
      14·
      1 month ago

      More likely, it was just taken on 2 different devices. It’s reasonable that the camera or phone they owned changed in 15 years.