PARIS -- Bosnian authorities have started using helicopters to evacuate the sick and deliver food to thousands of people cut off by the heaviest snowfall the nation has ever experienced.

Unusually heavy snow and below freezing temperatures have shut down much of Europe.

"This is unbelievable. I can't remember snow like this in past 30 years," Sarajevo resident Mirsada Mitrovic said.

More than 100 remote villages were isolated Monday by snow nearly 7 feet high in the mountains. More than 3 feet of snow has fallen in Sarajevo.

While the "mini Ice Age" barreled across Europe, a scientific debate also stirred as a result.

In London, The Independent reported that the extreme weather has nothing to do with what some call global cooling.

Instead the paper said it's actually about global warming, a popular claim throughout Europe.

The European Union considers global warming to be a scientific fact. So when there is a heat wave, media reports of "climate change" usually follow.

But now that Europe is in the freezer, many climate experts have gone silent.

Anne-Elisabeth Moutet is a Paris-based columnist for the London Telegraph.

"Climate change is an article of faith and an article of law (in the European Union)," she explained.

"You have this lemming effect where all the scientists are sort of blindly following climate change because so many have invested interest in it," Moutet added.

In Ukraine, temperatures have fallen to 33 below zero. At least 135 people have died.

And in Rome, it was a rare sight as Pope Benedict appeared above a St. Peter's Square still covered with snow from the day before. Rome hasn't had this much snow in 27 years.

Forecasters expect the bitter cold to continue through this week.