By Steve Quinn, AP

Ted Johnson planned on using a set of logs to a build a cabin in Alaska’s interior. Instead he’ll burn some of them to stay warm. Extreme temperatures - in Johnson’s case about 60 below zero - call for extreme measures in a statewide cold snap so frigid that temperatures have grounded planes, disabled cars, frozen water pipes and even canceled several championship cross country ski races. Alaskans are accustomed to subzero temperatures but the prolonged conditions have folks wondering what’s going on with winter less than a month old.

National Weather Service meteorologist Andy Brown said high pressure over much of central Alaska has been keeping other weather patterns from moving through. New conditions get pushed north or south while the affected area faces daily extremes. “When it first started almost two weeks ago, it wasn’t anything abnormal,” Brown said. “About once or twice every year, we get a good cold snap. But, in this case, you can call this an extreme event. This is rare. It doesn’t happen every year.”

Temperatures sit well below zero in the state’s various regions, often without a wisp of wind pushing down the mercury further. Johnson lives in Stevens Village, where residents have endured close to two weeks of temperatures pushing 60 below zero. The cold has kept planes grounded, Johnson said. Food and fuel aren’t coming in and they’re starting to run low in the village, about 90 miles northwest of Fairbanks. Johnson, whose home has no heater or running water, said he ventures outside only to get more logs for burning and to fetch water from a community facility. He’s been saving the wood to build a cabin as a second home, but that will have to wait a few years now because the heat takes precedence. “I’ve never seen it this cold for this long,” he said. “I remember it 70 below one time, but not for a week and a half.” Read more here.

Icecap Note: This frigid air will make its way southeast into the lower 48 the next 10 days or so. Snowstorms are likely along the edges. We will making the news like Europe and Alaska/Canada has in recent weeks. Could make things interesting come Inauguration Day.

By Jeff Poor, Business and Media Institute

It’s not often that meteorology intersects with geopolitics - but Europe could be in store for another Cold War, literally.  Accuweather.com’s chief long-range and hurricane forecaster Joe Bastardi observed that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s recent cut of gas flows to Europe via Ukraine may have been done so in anticipation of a global cooling cycle on the Jan. 6 “Glenn Beck Show” radio program. Bastardi has a solid reputation among Wall Street traders for understanding weather’s impact on energy commodities. “The thing I want to bring up here - very interesting - most of the solar cycle studies that we know about and that guys like me read have come out of the Russian scientists,” Bastardi said. “But when Glasnost developed, the Russian scientists, a lot of their ideas on the coming cool period that a lot of us believe is going to occur - ice, rather than fire is the big problem down the road here 2030, 2040, and the reversing cyclical cycles of the ocean - it came out of the East.” According to Bastardi - Putin is relying on the data from the Russian scientists and wants to bring some European nations to their knees by exploiting their reliance on natural gas when the weather is at its coldest. 

“Now my theory - something that I put out and it’s something that’s not something that people want to hear is that Putin knows what is going to happen - or he believes the same way I do about the overall climate pattern. So, if you control the pipeline into Europe, you literally can control Europe without firing a shot - if you control the energy.” Bastardi cited former President Ronald Reagan’s 1982 Cold War-era staunch resistance to a then-$10 billion pipeline that was proposed to deliver natural gas 3,500 miles from Siberia to the heart of Western Europe, as a July 12, 1982 Time magazine article pointed out. Reagan’s stance was criticized by Western Europe Cold War allies and was said to be “riding roughshod over Western Europe’s economies,” by Time. 

In a follow-up interview with the Business & Media Institute, Bastardi explained that a lot of Putin’s personality traits are at play here ‘ that he is using intelligence, going back to his days as at the KGB.  “The weather’s most certainly involved in this,” Bastardi said. “If look at what those Russian scientists, where a lot of these studies on it getting cold come from - you can see that, what makes you think that Putin doesn’t have some knowledge of that? Here’s the head of the KGB - and forever what you want to say, I’m sure he’s privy to the same kind of information the head of the CIA is privy to here about studies and what people are thinking on a scientific nature.” And according to Bastardi, Putin’s use of the flow of energy into Europe is just one of the weapons in his arsenal of tactics that he, as the head of Russia, has perfected using - comparing him to a wrestler with a perfected move.  “He’s definitely a type-A alpha male and we can both agree on that,” Bastardi said. “I mean look at him and he is more likely to use weapons - and I use weapons in terms of for instance a wrestler - a single-leg take down is a weapon. If you perfect it, you can use it the entire match.

He’s more likely in the art of war to use what he knows how to use, even if it’s only two or three things than try to go use something he doesn’t know how to use or try to create something - that’s a waste of time to use it.” It’s not a personality fault Bastardi contended on Beck’s program - but just what he considers proper for his country.  “And so, there are a couple of things that line up here that indicate the guy is trying act on behalf of his country and what he believes his country should be, “ Bastardi said. “And I believe that he wants to use nature, rather than change nature and that may be what’s going on over here.” See the story here.

Invite Congress to Class on 2/4 to Talk Climate
From: eban@lclark.edu

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

How would you like your classroom or campus audience to have a one-on-one session with your member of Congress or Senator?  Just send us an e-mail, and we will work to make it happen.  As a critical part of The National Teach-In on Global Warming Solutions, and with support from the Earth Day Network, we are coordinating with Speaker Pelosi’s office to set up a bank of computers in the capitol to create an historic opportunity for national dialogue.

This is a terrific chance for young people across the country to have their voices heard! Your representative can sit down at a laptop in DC and have a half an hour, low-carbon, non-partisan round-table with a campus audience- a class or assembly - on Wednesday, February 4th.  Please forward this message to interested folks across your state and region, and help us flood congress with invites to this vital day of engagement.

To learn more, join our bi-weekly organizing call, Wednesday, January 7that noon eastern. Environmental educator Dr. Tony Cortese will headline the call, and talk about how you can use the National Teach-In to highlight the American College and University President’s Climate Commitment. Call in number is 1-218-486-8700, passcode 020509.

Campus-to-Congress dialogues, and progress on the Climate Commitment are just two components of the National Teach-In. One month away, it is not too late to sign up your school, faith organization or civic group. Help us engage a thousand institutions and a million Americans in this critical day of education.

Participation in the teach-in is easy:

(1) Screen the launch web cast, The First 100 Days, featuring David Orr, Hunter Lovins, and youth climate leaders Billy Parish and Wahela Johns. Watch the webcast in a campus auditorium, or school or church basement. We are partnering with Interfaith Power & Light to produce a special version of the webcast tailored for faith audiences. Or hold a D.I.Y. Teach-In in your living room.

(2) Campuses can engage further with day-long teach-ins - we have model curricula for schools from K-8 to university levels. Schools planning major events include Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Bard College, and the University of Central Florida.

(3) End your teach-in in a round-table dialogue with decision-makers: inviting Governors, mayors, and city-councilors to sit down with young people for face-to-face conversation about solutions.  Again: Let us know, and we will also invite your federal representatives to engage with your teach-in via video dialogues that we are setting up in the capitol on February 4th.

Already, more than 500 colleges, universities, high schools and K-8 schools around the country (also churches, synagogues, mosques, libraries, civic organizations and businesses) have signed on to participate.  At a critical moment at the beginning of the new administration, help mobilize thousands of institutions and millions of Americans, and on this one day, raise global warming solutions to the top of the nation’s agenda.

Thanks for the work you are doing.
Professor Eban Goodstein, Co-Director
Chungin Chung, Co-Director

Books & Videos For the National Teach-In
With inspiring vision and a timely focus on the economic crisis, Van Jones’ new book is a critical resource for global warming educators."The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems. “

On video: Jon Isham and Eban Goodstein talk about their recent books on building the global warming solutions movement-- Fighting for Love in the Century of Extinction (Goodstein) and Ignition (Isham and Waage)

Other recent books of note: Gary Braasch’s Earth Under Fire; and Gary and Lynne Cherry’s How We Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate: Scientists and Kids Explore Global Warming, Laurie David’s Down to Earth Guide; Jay Inslee and Bracken Hendrick’s Apollo’s Fire and Fight Global Warming Now from Step it Up. Our Changing Climate: Scientists and Kids Explore Global Warming, Laurie David’s Down to Earth Guide; Jay Inslee and Bracken Hendrick’s Apollo’s Fire and Fight Global Warming Now from Step it Up.

See the full email as pdf with hyperlinks here.

Icecap Note: this is another attempt to present a biased, flawed and failing story on global warming to brainwash young America AND influence congress in order to try and accomplish the alarmist goals. Please email both Shawna (email:scrocker@colostate.edu) and Eban (email: eban@lclark.edu) with your objections and insist on a balanced program not a one-sided brainwash. You may include this link on the temperatures since 2001 from SPPI using both satellite and surface observations compared to IPCC model forecst range or appropriate links from your favorite web sites.