After cold rain and winds lashed the Southwest and other parts of the country Friday, millions of residents hunkered down for icy conditions expected to last through the weekend as the cold snap was forecast to continue causing problems and trekking northeast.

Face-stinging sleet, thick snow and blustery winds led to slick road conditions, school closures, power outages and event cancellations as the wintry blast dropped temperatures to freezing and below from Texas to Ohio to Tennessee on Friday.

In California, four people died of hypothermia in the San Francisco Bay Area while the region was gripped by freezing temperatures.

The weather created a strangely blank landscape out of normally sun-drenched North Texas: Mostly empty highways were covered in a sometimes impassable frost.

It forced the cancellation of Sunday's Dallas Marathon, which was expected to draw 25,000 runners, some of whom had trained for months. A quarter of a million customers in North Texas were left without power, and many businesses told employees to stay home to avoid the hazardous roads.

Meanwhile, around 7 inches of snow fell in northeast Arkansas and the Missouri boot heel, according to the National Weather Service in Memphis. Ice accumulated on trees and power lines in Memphis and the rest of West Tennessee after layers of sleet fell throughout the region Friday.

The storm dumped a foot of snow and more in some areas of Illinois, with police scrambling to respond to dozens of accidents and forced scores of schools to remain closed.

Cold air will stay put after an ice storm cut power to hundreds of thousands of customers from Texas to Tennessee. The lingering frigid air will not only lay the path for more icing this weekend but will also delay recovery in communities dealing with widespread power outages and thus no heat.

More than half an inch of ice has weighed down trees and power lines over a widespread swath from northern Texas to Arkansas and northwestern Tennessee Thursday into Friday. Some communities near Dallas, Texas, have received as much as 3 inches of sleet.

"One cubic foot of ice weighs about 62 pounds," Senior Vice President of AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions Mike Smith said. "When you add 10- to 15-mph winds (swaying the lines) to all of that weight, the lines snap or break. Also, tree limbs sag onto the lines or fall onto the lines causing massive power failures."

The cover story of the November 25, 2013 Canadian weekly magazine Macleans pictures self-appointed Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki.

The caption reads, "Environmentalism Has Failed" "David Suzuki loses faith in the cause of his lifetime."

Suzuki doesn't realize he's the cause of the failure as a major player in the group who exploited environmentalism and climate for a political agenda. Initially most listened and tried to accommodate, but gradually the lies, deceptions and propaganda were exposed. The age of eco-bullying is ending. Typically Suzuki blamed others for the damage to the environment and climate but now he blames them for not listening to him. He forgets that when you point a finger at someone three are pointing back at you.

Environmentalism was what academics call a paradigm shift, which Thomas Kuhn defines as "a fundamental change in approach or underlying assumptions." It was a necessary new paradigm. Everybody accepts the general notion it is foolish to soil your own nest and most were prepared to participate. Most were not sure what it entailed or how far it should go. Extremists grab all new paradigms for their agenda but then define the limits for the majority by pushing beyond the limits of the idea. Environmentalism and the subset climate are at that stage pushed there by extremists like Suzuki. Instead of admitting the science is wrong they double down and make increasingly extreme statements, just like the IPCC. It underscores the political rather than the scientific agenda. For example, Suzuki, apparently frustrated that politicians were not listening to his demands for action on climate change said they should be jailed.

A huge sinkhole on a city street nearly swallowed a pickup truck this morning, now what?

Now, the Water Department says that a resident of the 900-block of Randolph Street in Northern Liberties has to pay for the repair of the gaping hole that almost swallowed a gray Dodge pickup.

"$2600," says Larisa Dersko.

It is the last thing the residents of Chongqing would have expected to see.

But the Yangtze river, which runs through the city in south-western China, turned a bright shade of orange-red yesterday.

The waterway where the Yangtze met the Jialin river provided a fascinating contrast as the red started to filter into the other river.

Science journalist Axel Bojanowski of Spiegel comments on winter storm "Xaver" that pounded the north German coast yesterday, and on North Sea storms in general.

So are North Sea storms getting worse? Bojanowski (my emphasis):

Measurements of air pressure and wind since the middle of the 19th century show no increase in storms in the North Sea. The region over the last years has even been low with respect to wind. Although the year-to-year fluctuations are high, a trend in storm frequency is not detectable by scientists."

Arcadia - Oklahoma, that US state where, according to the song, "The wind comes sweeping down the plain," had more to worry about Saturday than breezy weather as it experienced a 4.5 magnitude earthquake.

Early reports of little, if any damage, did not take into account the rattled nerves of locals. Weeks ago it was the two-year anniversary of the strongest earthquake ever recorded in Oklahoma and obviously Saturday's temblor caused some anxiety among local people.

According to CS Monitor though "after the initial surprise, customers at a central Oklahoma restaurant returned their attention to an in-state college football rivalry game." For some the frequency of quakes in the area is leading to complacency. To make matters worse Saturday, for those less blas'e, two further quake's occurred.

The U.S. Geological Survey reported that the tremor was followed by a "magnitude-2.8 earthquake at 1:26 p.m. about 10 miles northeast of Oklahoma City and a magnitude-3.1 tremor at 5:58 p.m. about 6 miles northeast of the city." The main quake was centered near Arcadia, about 14 miles northeast of Oklahoma City, and was about 5 miles deep.

On Nov. 17, Cash Lambert filled this column with an alarming call to act now on global warming.

But Mr. Lambert fails to make his case. Why? Simply regurgitating "conventional wisdom" just doesn't suffice when that conventional wisdom is just plain wrong.

For example, did you know that ... 1) the earth hasn't warmed for 17 years? 2) the Pacific Ocean is cooling and Antarctic ice is at 30-year highs? 3) there's no conclusive evidence that man-made greenhouse gases cause warming? 4) higher CO2 levels and modest warming would be good for the planet? And 5) sea levels are extremely unlikely to rise materially in the intermediate term, if ever?

Why haven't you likely heard all this before? It's because of the conventional-wisdom sources - a powerfully vocal admixture of several interest groups: research scientists, thousands of whom would lose their livelihood if man-made global warming is invalidated; environmentalists trying to "save the planet"; and the mainstream media, which knows that crises, real or supposed, engage subscribers.

The alarmists' case rests on a three-legged stool: a strong, and accelerating, upward trend in temperatures; a rise in CO2 and other man-made greenhouse gases; and the harmful net effects justifying international policies to limit greenhouse gases.

Clearly, the failure of any leg invalidates proposed action calls.

Turns out, the hard facts - from a bevy of credentialed scientists - undermine all three legs.

Rising-temperature trends have been exaggerated

The earth has not warmed over the past 17 years (period). A prior 20-plus-year warming interval incubated the man-made global warming hysteria. But it was preceded by a 30-year global-cooling period - so substantial that many of the same alarmists (including The New York Times, Time magazine and Science Digest) were calling for global actions to stem the "coming ice age."

Hard data show that any Arctic melting has been dwarfed by the 2013 30-year record-high Antarctic ice cover.

A powerful icy storm system is sweeping across the US, resulting in temperatures dropping to -29C and lower as well as deaths, power cuts and massive travel disruption.

A severe winter storm warning has been issued by the Government's National Weather Service, and forecasters say the storm is heading for Virginia and the Mid-Atlantic next.

Yesterday, the mercury dropped to -29C in Montana and South Dakota during the day, while officials have warned residents in northwest Minnesota to brace for temperatures as low as -45C with the impact of wind chill.