At first glance, the handful of teenagers — with their rubber bracelets, stylish tennis shoes and shaggy haircuts — could have been any group of kids working on an ordinary school project as they painted signs and talked about the coming weekend.

But what they are undertaking is far from ordinary, or easy.

The blue bracelets read "Stop global warming." The weekend event they talked about was similar to one that a group of adults in Santa Barbara tried to do but that was canceled after protests and the threat of lawsuits.

The kids, however, are moving forward.

On Sunday, the Sea Level Awareness Project, orchestrated entirely by the teenagers of Kids vs. Global Warming, will put up a series of poles along Ventura's beachfront promenade to show how high the sea will rise if nothing is done to combat global warming.

"It's a message for the kids of Ventura that we need to do something about it because we will be the ones affected," said Alec Loorz, the precocious 14-year-old from Ventura who started the project. "I think people will become aware (of global warming) and push for changes."

The 10, eight-foot poles between the pier and Surfer's Point will show how high the water will rise — about 23 feet above sea level — if nothing is done to stop rising temperatures over the next 100 years and all the ice on Greenland melts, according to Alec's research.

The event will start at noon Sunday at City Hall with students marching toward the promenade, where they will unveil the poles, give speeches and have a band playing. Others, especially kids, are encouraged to attend the free event.

Marchers will carry 18 signs playing off the iPod theme, using images of a student with the slogan "iMatter," a picture of a glacier reading "iMelt," or a gas pump with "iProfit."

36 students involved

The march and poles are the culmination of the work of Alec and about 35 others at Ventura Charter School of Arts and Global Education and the Ventura Unified School District's Open Classroom program. The work began after Alec motivated students by showing his PowerPoint presentation on the woes of climate change.

The idea of the poles — and maybe having as many as 100 others on private property around town in the coming year — started a few months ago and has taken hours of preparation. That they have even gotten this far is somewhat remarkable considering what happened to a similar idea last year in Santa Barbara.

Artists there planned to paint a 1,000-foot-long blue line around the town to show how high the ocean would rise if Greenland's glaciers melted. Originally, the city was going to chip in $12,000 for the project, but when some balked at the city's paying for it, the public funding was pulled.

A group of real estate agents, backed by editorials from the Santa Barbara News-Press, started attacking the project, saying it would lower property values for those homes below the blue line.

"We didn't realize that people would not understand that it was an artist's idea to bring awareness to the subject," said Charlene Huston, who worked with the Light Blue Line project.

City manager said OK

The group against the line threatened to sue the city and the project's organizers, so the program was stopped. The funny thing, Huston said, is all the controversy actually drew more attention to the issue than the line would have.

When Alec and his crew came up with the idea for Ventura, they first approached City Manager Rick Cole.

"Government always has to be very careful about wading into controversial topics," Cole said, "but on the other hand, government has to be careful that it doesn't become so straightjacketed that it turns down an idealistic bunch of young people who are having their first opportunity to express themselves on an issue they care deeply about."

So the city backed the project, and Cole is scheduled to talk on Sunday.

Alec has heard one complaint about the project. Cole said some opponents are guaranteed.

The teens debated how they would deal with naysayers.

"We should respect their ideas, but this is something you should believe in, and if you don't," started Max Castro, 13.

" You'll sleep with the fishes," joked Luke Bennett, 14.

— On the Net: http://www.kids-vs-global-warming.com or http://www.slapventura.com.