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).
Funny how not one single original poster has had a problem with it.. guess you should go back through your stalking files and check that little fact...
I don’t have to stalk all I have to do is open
a thread and there you are.
After looking at your posting history, anyone could ask you the same question.
Oh, I see not.
You'd know.
I can only think of the scene in the movie “Christmas Story” when the little boy stuck his tongue on the freezing flag pole and got it stuck... and hope of a “similar” happening on the glacier.
.
I was going to leave it alone but after the pithy
little Frmail from trooprally I decided to reply.
PAR35 doesn't seem to be making his life's goal to point out duplicate posts like you do.
It’s also about condemning others for things that someone ends up doing themselves like mentioned in post 17.
Not cool.
Well...bump that!
xcamel seems to make it his life’s work to point out double, triple postings.
I am happy that he is so diligent wrt this forum.
However, some of the last posts receive more replies than the first post.
That, alone, makes double posts worthwhile.
Unless, xcamel, all you are doing is collecting all of the posts in one place.
If so, I think there might be a better way to do it.
Do you have any ideas?
If not, then please cease and desist.
I know I’ve caught a thread for the first time on its second or even third posting.
I went through xcamel’s posting history and clicked on the links to see WHEN the *original* threads were posted. A fair chunk of the original threads were posted at some time between 1 AM and 6 AM; IOW, in the middle of the night when most people are sleeping.
The largest category was when the *original* thread was posted in the middle of the work day.
Most missed threads happen then the majority of us are either sleeping or out supporting ourselves working for a living. Fancy that.
It’s been noticed and commented on, on this site, that search doesn’t always work well; and that is not the responsibility of the poster.
I’ve actually seen people apologize in advance if they’re posting a duplicate because of harassment from other FReepers about duplicate posts. That should not have to happen; there’s no excuse for that. Nobody should feel so harassed that they have to defend themselves from the getgo.
I am 100% in agreement with you ukie55.
He really seems to be addicted to finding
duplicate threads. It appears to be in an attempt
to make the second poster feel like there
is something wrong with them. But that’s usually
the way it is with people who lack self confidence.
They have to make someone else look bad when they
can’t make themselves look good.
Do you use the same handle over at the DU ?? - you’re really starting to act like it...
Never even been DU.
You seem to know about it though.
I would think getting naked on a glacier would only contribute to further shrinkage....
Bwaaaaaaa Haaaa Haaaa
ROTFLOL
That's all I'm going to say. Otherwise I would get banned!!
[Mr] T
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