Puzzling climate propaganda from Reuters

Check out the 1/8/08 sob story here, entitled "China ice festival feels heat from climate change".

Excerpts:

"In the beginning of December 2002, ice lanterns in Harbin melted right after they were sculpted. What came out of the work was sweaty ice sculptures," Yin Xuemian, senior meteorologist at the Heilongjiang Observatory, told Reuters.
...
Far from the global debates about how to curb climate change, participants in Harbin's festival have more immediate concerns: how to keep their creations from melting.

"We are worried that the thing will collapse. We tried to readjust a little bit," said one Malaysian participant chipping away at a hunk of ice.

According to this page:

Officially, the festival starts from January 5th and lasts one month.

Ok, so how much "heat" is actually being felt in Harbin right now?

According to Weather Underground, the answer seems to be "not too much". It's -2 F right now, with temperatures ranging from +12 to -25 F expected through next Tuesday:



This page currently shows that temperatures have ranged between +21 and -18 F so far in 2008.

I'm skeptical that the ice sculptures are going to melt very quickly in those temperatures...