True indeed, much of the northern ice cap floats on the Arctic Ocean, but one should not forget that there are vast ice sheets covering Banks Island, Victoria Island, the Queen Elizabeth Islands, Resolute Island, Elllesmere Island, Baffin Island. Greenland, of course, Svalbard, Franz Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya, Severnay Zemlya, New Siberian Islands, not to mention the snow and ice covered coastlines of the continents, from the Bering Strait, across Alaska and Canada, the islands north of Canada which I have already listed, along with Greenland, then Northern Europe from Norway's North Cape, across Russia and Siberia and back to the Bering Strait again. And I've listed only the larger islands. There many smaller ones, also covered with snow and ice.

That's one helluva lot of frozen water!

In this morning's news:

"Scientists and government officials from 113 countries issue a new report on climate change that blames humans for rising global temperatures. The report predicts changes in temperature, precipitation patterns and sea level over the next 100 years.

Susan Solomon, a top U.S. government climate scientist and co-chair of the meeting in Paris, speaks with Steve Inskeep about the report."

To hear the report, go HERE and click on the "Listen" button at the top of the page.

Full text of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report HERE. PDF document.

Don Firth