Posted on 08/19/2007 12:18:20 PM PDT by pitbully
Nearly 600 volunteers stripped before the camera on a melting Swiss glacier high in the Alps on Saturday as part of a publicity campaign to expose the impact of climate change. The eco-conscious volunteers turned up under blue skies near the foot of the Aletsch glacier, a protected UNESCO World Heritage site.
Environmental group Greenpeace commissioned the photo shoot from world renowned photographer Spencer Tunick.
"Their numbers are close to 600," Nicolas de Roten of Greenpeace Switzerland told AFP. "It's relatively chilly but that doesn't seem to be disturbing them."
The campaign is aimed at drawing attention to melting Alpine glaciers, one clear sign of global warming and of man-made climate change, according to the group.
Greenpeace says the human body is as fragile as glaciers like the Aletsch in southern Switzerland and the world's environment. The glacier itself is now shrinking by about 100 metres (110 yards) a year.
"I want my images to go more than skin-deep. I want the viewers to feel the vulnerability of their existence and how it relates closely to the sensitivity of the world's glaciers," Tunick said.
The group hopes its billboard and poster campaign showing people exposed to the cold will send a shiver down the spines of public opinion and politicians, and convince them to do more to tackle pollution and climate change.
"They'll be used at the right moment for our campaign, in Switzerland first and then worldwide," de Roten said from the location, about an hour's hike from the village of Bettmeralp.
Tunick split the men and women into two groups of about 300 for separate shots on or around the lower end of the spectacular 23 kilometre long (14 miles) sweeping ice floe, at an altitude of about 2,300 metres (7545 feet).
Dressed in hiking gear, they stripped for minutes at a time, watched at a distance by a clump of media photographers and journalists.
While cooler than the valley below, temperatures were well above freezing -- about 10 to 15 degrees Celsius (50 to 60 Fahrenheit).
The US-born photographer is famous for his spectacular art photos of large groups of naked people carefully positioned around landmarks.
Tunick calls them "living sculptures" or "body landscapes" and he nowadays works mainly to order for contemporary art galleries.
About 18,000 nudes posed for the US-born photographer in Mexico City's Zocalo Square in May.
Other backdrops have included the Gateshead Centre for Contemporary Art in England (2005), the Biennale in Lyon, France (2005), and Grand Central Station in New York (2003).
Volunteers for the Swiss photoshoot were asked to turn up by train and cable car, to avoid generating carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.
Bettmeralp's mayor, Heidi Kreuzer, was unimpressed by the fuss.
"There's no need to get undressed, I can show you very nice pictures of the glacier," she told the Swiss newspaper Le Matin.
Environmental issues have considerable resonance in mountainous Switzerland, which has been hit by a growing number of damaging flash floods and landslides in recent years due to stronger storms and rainfall, as well as heatwaves.
A Swiss government report this week underlined that temperatures were rising faster than the global average, and measures needed to tackle the impact of global warming would cost the country about one billion Swiss francs (833 million dollars, 617 million euros) a year.
The country's 1,800 glaciers are regarded as a visible barometer of global warming.
Their data also shows that all Switzerland's main glaciers are retreating and the melting has accelerated since the mid-1990s, according to scientists at Zurich's Federal Polytechnic (ETHZ).
Well the Swiss do have a lot of free time to pursue worthless/make believe causes...much to the gratification of Algore and his ilk.
This is at least the third time this article has been posted.
All that body heat just adds to the glacier melting.
[Mr] T
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1883255/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1883247/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1883123/posts
It’s about as intelligent as streaking. Just another excuse for a heathen to make a fool of himself.
And I rarely use the word heathen—and probably not even out of any religious sense, but it’s appropriate here.
sorry for reposting, but I did not see it here today. : ))
My view on this is that it’s just a bunch of idiots with cold backsides who wanted their pictures taken doing something for poor mother earth.
FYI:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1883255/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1883247/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1883123/posts
(some with pictures YECH!)
I don’t understand the point of this. Are they hoping to freeze to death and therefore not spread anymore evil CO2 by dcomposing? And what about the poor plants that rely on CO2 for food? It seem pretty selfish. And unkind.
Try doing this with the sun down and you’ll have 600 BIG frozen popsicles.
Where is our black and white Man saying Not this sheet again?
Don't have that one but since pitbully posted the thread,
this one may be appropriate...
LOL That’s better.
Evens make the dog cringe. Heh.
I’d really like to know who died and appointed you “Boss of Free Republic”
What a coincidence I was just wondering the same thing about you.
I challenge you to find where I tracked a thread down
and posted to someone for posting a duplicate thread.
You really should display a little respect for ranking members.
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