Some thoughts on climate change

Yesterday the incomprehensible became the incontrovertible, something I've rationally known but emotionally not wanted to believe finally became unavoidable.
In 2010, after Mum, after the trial, after we came so close to breaking, I brought Mrs IttH here to the Alps. Escapism, a chance to see the world still had wonder, a place to try and fall in love with life again. I'd been coming here climbing for two decades, but as well travelled as we were we hadn't been here together.
One day that summer, we made our way out to the Mer de Glace, adventure in mind. We rode the little red train up out of the valley and then the tiny little gondola down towards the glacier. Even then it was a shock to see how far the steps down now went, but the change 'felt' possibly cyclical, the glacier seemed mostly as I remembered it always being. Perhaps we weren't yet really talking about this as a society, perhaps I wasn't yet really listening.
That day, less than a decade ago we had places to be. With a nod to the guardian we opened this very gate and strode out onto the glacier, roped together we went out to dodge crevasses, play with axes and finally ascend the famous ladders up the cliffs back to Montenvers - all experiences thousands of budding Alpinistes have done since climbing became a thing.
Today the same gate, now locked, opens onto scoured hillside and the glacier is now hundreds of feet lower. In my main picture you can just make out people if you squint. Walking from the gate wouldn't now get you to the glacier, neither it seems would descending the ladders, the bergshrund now rises like a wall from there as the glacier recedes away.
Today we again descended down to the ice cave, now full of information rather than silly sculptures. Shockingly the glacier is now so reduced that light filters through. Signs tell you it's thickness is now eighty metres, a decade ago it was two hundred.
It's a cumulative process - it's not the thickness that matters but the volume - it's a massive thing, but the amount that has now been lost is immense. In a classically V sided valley an awful volume of ice has been lost, the valley is probably 5-800m wide. That in turn means the glacier is actually warmer, there's less mass to keep it cool, there's more rock to heat up and accelerate the process.*
Ive always 'known' the glacier moves like a giant frozen river at 120 metres a year, now with less snow above, less weight to push it, that flow rate is less than 60m.
When I first came here in 1988 there were 3 steps to the ice. In that summer of 2010 there were 250. Today there are 430.
Later in the day, and nearly as shocking, we found standing water, à liquid pool, on the top of the glacier at 3400m.I've never seen that before.

We have a 'leader of the free world' who believes climate change is a conspiracy, we have politicians in our own country who vote against control measure. Here in the Alps the glaciers are dying before our eyes.
I don't know that or even if solutions can now be found, but I do know that a journey to here brings a very stark message sharply into focus.


*obviously I'm simplifying this a lot!