Are the world's ice caps melting because of climate change, or are the

>reports just a lot of scare mongering by the advocates of the global

>warming theory?

>Scare mongering appears to be the case, according to reports from the U.S.

>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that reveal that

>almost all the allegedly "lost" ice has come back. A NOAA report shows that

>ice levels which had shrunk from 5 million square miles in January 2007 to

>just 1.5 million square miles in October, are almost back to their original

>levels.

>Moreover, a Feb. 18 report in the London Daily Express showed that there is

>nearly a third more ice in Antarctica than usual, challenging the global

>warming crusaders and buttressing arguments of skeptics who deny that the

>world is undergoing global warming.

>The Daily express recalls the photograph of polar bears clinging on to a

>melting iceberg which has been widely hailed as proof of the need to fight

>climate change and has been used by former Vice President Al Gore during

>his "Inconvenient Truth" lectures about mankind's alleged impact on the

>global climate.

>Gore fails to mention that the photograph was taken in the month of August

>when melting is normal. Or that the polar bear population has soared in

>recent years.

>As winter roars in across the Northern Hemisphere, Mother Nature seems to

>have joined the ranks of the skeptics.

>As the Express notes, scientists are saying the northern Hemisphere has

>endured its coldest winter in decades, adding that snow cover across the

>area is at its greatest since 1966. The newspaper cites the one exception -

>Western Europe, which had, until the weekend when temperatures plunged to

>as low as -10 C in some places, been basking in unseasonably warm weather.

>Around the world, vast areas have been buried under some of the heaviest

>snowfalls in decades. Central and southern China, the United States, and

>Canada were hit hard by snowstorms. In China, snowfall was so heavy that

>over 100,000 houses collapsed under the weight of snow.

>Jerusalem, Damascus, Amman, and northern Saudi Arabia report the heaviest

>falls in years and below-zero temperatures. In Afghanistan, snow and

>freezing weather killed 120 people. Even Baghdad had a snowstorm, the first

>in the memory of most residents.

>AFP news reports icy temperatures have just swept through south China,

>stranding 180,000 people and leading to widespread power cuts just as the

>area was recovering from the worst weather in 50 years, the government said

>Monday. The latest cold snap has taken a severe toll in usually temperate

>Yunnan province, which has been struck by heavy snowfalls since Thursday, a

>government official from the provincial disaster relief office told AFP.

>Twelve people have died there, state Xinhua news agency reported, and four

>remained missing as of Saturday.

>An ongoing record-long spell of cold weather in Vietnam's northern region,

>which started on Jan. 14, has killed nearly 60,000 cattle, mainly bull and

>buffalo calves, local press reported Monday. By Feb. 17, the spell had

>killed a total of 59,962 cattle in the region, including 7,349 in the Ha

>Giang province, 6,400 in Lao Cai, and 5,571 in Bac Can province, said Hoang

>Kim Giao, director of the Animal Husbandry Department under the Vietnamese

>Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, according to the Pioneer

>newspaper.

>In Britain the temperatures plunged to -10 C in central England, according

>to the Express, which reports that experts say that February could end up

>as one of the coldest in Britain in the past 10 years with the freezing

>night-time conditions expected to stay around a frigid -8 C until at least

>the middle of the week. And the BBC reports that a bus company's efforts to

>cut global warming emissions have led to services being disrupted by cold

>weather.

>Meanwhile Athens News reports that a raging snow storm that blanketed most

>of Greece over the weekend and continued into the early morning hours on

>Monday, plunging the country into sub-zero temperatures. The agency

>reported that public transport buses were at a standstill on Monday in the

>wider Athens area, while ships remained in ports, public services remained

>closed, and schools and courthouses in the more severely-stricken

>prefectures were also closed.

>Scores of villages, mainly on the island of Crete, and in the prefectures

>of Evia, Argolida, Arcadia, Lakonia, Viotia, and the Cyclades islands were

>snowed in.

>More than 100 villages were snowed-in on the island of Crete and

>temperatures in Athens dropped to -6 C before dawn, while the coldest

>temperatures were recorded in Kozani, Grevena, Kastoria and Florina, where

>they plunged to -12 C.

>Temperatures in Athens dropped to -6 C before dawn, while the coldest

>temperatures were recorded in Kozani, Grevena, Kastoria and Florina, where

>they plunged to -12 C.

>If global warming gets any worse we'll all freeze to death.