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Postcards blanket glacier

Effort aims to shed light on global warming

ALETSCH GLACIER, Switzerland — Kids across the world expressed concerns about global warming by joining forces to create what organizers say is the world’s biggest postcard on a glacier in the Swiss Alps.

Bearing messages of hope and commitment, more than 125,000 colorful and hand-written postcards from kids around the world have emblazoned a glacier in Switzerland to create one giant one, half the size of a football field.

It’s a cry of help — from New Orleans to Hong Kong, from sub-Saharan Africa to India — ahead of an upcoming U.N.-backed climate conference in Poland next month.

The Swiss development and cooperation agency and partners unfurled Friday a “compound postcard,” on top of the threatened Aletsch glacier, the longest and deepest in the Alps and which is on track to melt to nonexistence by the end of this century if global warming trends continue.

Organizers say the individual postcards delivered to the 3,400-meter height near Switzerland’s famed Jungfraujoch, aimed to set a Guinness World Record for the “postcard with the most contributions.”

Pinned down with clamps and nets, and laminated in strips to protect them from the ice and snow, the postcards bore messages of efforts to fight climate change and help the environment.

Ever mindful of the impact, organizers are calculating the CO2 footprint caused by sending so many postcards and preparing to double the offset, or compensation.

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