Social Media is awesome! It provides an unique opportunity to keep in touch with unique people.

In in the end of July 2011, Vladimir Sevostianov, a fb friend of mine, visited
Franz Josef Land and brought amazing photographs of the Russian Arctic in summer.

Take a look at his photographs and learn that the Arctic is not just ice, snow, fog, dark stones and cliffs, and polar bears, but it is also full of real life. Animals, colourful flowers and even mushrooms.

Vladimir Sevostianov is President of Commander Islands and BC Nature Protection and Conservation Association in Russia. A big fan of writing. Check out his page http://proza.ru/avtor/orca7.

Franz Josef Land Archipelago is located in the Russian Arctic 540 miles from the North Pole. Includes 191 ice-covered islands. Discovered by the Austian expedition in 1873.

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A tidewater glacier on Svalbard during last week s Lindblad Expeditions and National Geographic Expeditions adventure in the Arctic.

Today is Ice Photo Wednesday run by Polar Explorer Eric Larsen (www.ericlarsenexplore.com) on Facebook (see his page) and #IcePhoto on Twitter.

Ice Photo Wednesday is the day, when anyone are welcome to share their love of ice, cold and snow with the rest of the world. How does it work?

Every morning on Wednesday, Eric Larsen – it was him, who invented the event – announces the start of The Ice Photo Day. He publishes his own fascinating “ice” photographs and ask his readers and followers to do the same… And you know what? People do share pictures of gorgeous ice and magnificant snow.

When Eric see new pics, he resharing them on his Facebook and Twitter accounts and give their authors big publicity and promotion. If the famous American explorer is online… hey, he can be connected even from the Arctic or the Everest top, you might see his fantastic photographs.

Give a try and join Eric on his facebook page and Twitter using the hashtag #IcePhoto.

Meanwhile, enjoy Mr. Larsen’s ice photographs of the Arctic Ocean, Norway’s Svalbard, and Everest!

Saying a lot of sincere thanks to him for permission to show his pics on ColdUnited.com. It’s a big honor! Here and further all captions to ice photographs are given by Eric Larsen himself.

More ice!

Remember, it's cool to be cold!

Cooling you off with an Ice photo...

Incredible week in Svalbard. Definitely great to be back in the land of ice!

Does the warm weather mean that I am running out of IcePhotos? Absolutely not! Time to share the cold, snow and ice. This week: Hoar frost on the Arctic Ocean.

Sharing my love of ice, cold and snow with the rest of the world... Sea Ice while flying over Svalbard.

On Everest looking back toward Camp 1.

See tons of magic ice pictures on Facebook and Twitter.

Who is Eric Larsen?
In November 2009 Polar explorer Eric Larsen began the Save the Poles Expedition a first-ever journey to the South Pole, North Pole and summit of Mt. Everest in a continuous 365-day period. His purpose? To travel to the “front lines” of global warming to document the changes occurring in these last great frozen places.
Website, Blog, RSS, Facebook, Twitter.

Can you imagine? When the rest of the world is suffering the heat and the temperature much above +40C and even +50C, people of Greenland’s Uummannaq settlement are enjoying “the sight and light and smell of the salty seawater and fresh glacier air” daily.

That’s the way Hivshu Ua described the Uummannaq life among Arctic icebergs in July 2011.

Uummannaq dwellers are very lucky to have such honor… Unfortunately, it might not last forever. In 30 years, scientists predict the ice-free(!) Arctic…

Who is Hivshu Ua?

He is one of great men participated in the Uummannaq Music project. Be sure to visit UM’s website, facebook page and Flickr sets to learn more and see Greenland in its currently-existing glory.

Hope, you will like this and below-published photographs and say thanks with me to Hivshu Ua, their author, for letting us to see such an Arctic summer beauty online.

BattleHarbour about its video:

What an amazing sight to see! “Small” chunk of the massive Petermann Ice Island. This “berg” is approximately 3 miles long and 2.8 miles wide. Wow, that’s nearly 5 times the size of Battle Island!

Special thanks go out to Port Hope Simpson resident & crab fisherman, Eldred Burden, for capturing this magnificent ice structure. Truly breathtaking!

This part of the Berg has already passed Battle Harbour, but we are still awaiting the arrival of the larger chunk!

A massive ice island that broke off a glacier in Greenland 11 months ago has been winding its way through Arctic waters ever since. Satellites have now spotted it off the coast of Labrador, Canada, MSNBC.com reports,

The ice island was formed when a 97-square-mile chunk of ice broke off Greenland’s Petermann Glacier on Aug. 5, 2010. It was the largest iceberg to form in the Arctic in 50 years.

Petermann Glacier is one of the two largest remaining glaciers in Greenland that terminate in floating shelves. The glacier connects the great Greenland ice sheet directly with the ocean. When the chunk of ice four times the size of Manhattan broke off, the Petermann Glacier lost about one-quarter of its 43-mile-long floating ice shelf, according to researchers at the University of Delaware.

The Canadian Ice Service has since been tracking the ice island, dubbed PII-A, via satellite and radio beacon.

NASA’s Aqua satellite captured an image of the ice chunk in the Labrador Sea on June 25.

The island has been slowly breaking up and melting on its more than 1,800-mile journey so far. News agencies reported that the ice island now covered roughly 24 square miles in area and weighed between 3.5 and 4 billion tons.

But even with its diminishing size, it could eventually pose a hazard to offshore oil platforms and shipping lanes off Newfoundland.

Environment Canada dropped a beacon on PII-A on Sept., 17, 2010, to help track the island.

Resource: MSNBC.com.

The second season of the Uummannaq Music project (www.uummannaqmusic.com) curated and done by Galya Morrel and Joel Spiegelman in Uummannaq, Greenland, has been finished.

It’s really hard to describe what they have completed this year. So many activities! Too many! That was the reason why the post was delayed.

Praise god, Galya created the video presentation of the Uummannaq Music project for The International Arctic Social Sciences Association (IASSA) Conference in Akureyri, Iceland

Galya Morell & Joel Spiegelman’s project “Uummaannaq Music”
The most unusual Music Festival at the Ice School for Orphaned Eskimo Children in Uummaannaq, Greenland, 590 kilometers north of the Artic Circle
Blog, RSS, Facebook, YouTube.

Uummannaq Music is included in Cold United’s list of Cold-Related People & Projects.

About Video #1

This is BBC One’s web exclusive Human Planet series trailer. Human Planet (http://www.bbc.co.uk/humanplanet) is an awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping, heart-stopping landmark series that marvels at mankind’s incredible relationship with nature in the world today.

About Video #2

A montage of clips from the “Ice Worlds” episode of Planet Earth, set to “Glosoli” by Sigur Ros.

These two videos might be enough for a human being to start admiring the Planet and come to understanding of how the Earth is amazing and… fragile…

Sometimes we forget where we live. It’s good to sit in the cafe and drink coffee and enjoy this special moment. It’s funny to read gossips about Charlie Sheen and other celebrities. It’s good to drive highways at high speed and get excited from your freedom…

But… what if we’ll start paying a little attention to our surroundings and thinking, how all this amazingness around us might be ruined just in a few moments? Maybe, some good things will come with it?

Ok. Let’s stop with speeches. Frankly, I am far away from environmental policy things. Just… it would be really pitty to loose such beauty one day. Do you want that? Me not. “Our planet is cool, let’s keep it that way.” (c)

If wonder, what we can do, read Moki Kokori’s message in the previous post.

Ok. The previous video was a fun. This one is pretty serious. It appeared online on the CoolPlanet2009 Vimeo page one year ago. Not a new one, but its date publication is not essential. The problem remains the same. Environmental changes are taking ground and pretty rapidly.

About the documentary

The Deal film “Journey to the Polar Ice Rim” prepared by the United Nations staff member David Ohana documents UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s recent visit to the Arctic, where he witnessed rapid environmental changes caused by the global warming.

This video was shared by Moki Kokoris. Today we, Moki, Joel Spiegelman and I, had a short facebook chat, but with a strong message.

Joel: What can one do? What action can the world take to stop the melting?

Moki: We may not be able to stop it, but there are many actions we can take to slow down the process. However, that takes effort, it takes change, and it requires sacrifice. Even small actions add up, but the most influential task is to educate others to understand the science, and to show them by example that we must all take responsibility for our own actions instead of blaming others. With one drop of water at a time, the bucket is eventually full.

I: Joel & Moki, can I quote you on the blog?

Moki: I have no problem with you quoting me. This is part of what I do. I travel to schools to talk to kids about the polar regions, mainly about the Arctic, but I always leave them with ideas of small changes in their lifestyles they can make to be better stewards of our planet. If you would like more information, go to my website: http://90-north.com/ Click on the small postcard in the left-hand sidebar. Convincing adults to change is much harder, but when I make the children “ambassadors of the polar bear (or the penguin),” and I tell them what their responsibilities are, they take their job very seriously, and *they* are the ones who will change their parents. It’s the kids who take the message further. Educating them is the critical component.

I: To work with kids is really a great way to reach the world!

Hurray! We’ve got a video from Fairbanks, Alaska. It was created by Ronn Murray, a great photographer living in the US coldest state. By the way, he’s got breathtaking pictures of Aurora Borealis. Love following his photostream on Facebook and his website Ronn Murray Photography.

Ronn, thanks a lot for joining our movement Show Your Place! Well, currently we have videos from Yakutsk (Yakutia/Russia), Reykjavik (Iceland), Fairbanks and New York City (USA). Who’s next?

PS. Oh, there is a video from Finland, but its author need to upload it on YouTube. We’ll wait for it. We are not in a hurry

What a fantastic video Galya Morrell, the Uummannaq Music project co-founder, is sending from New York!

She says, “Major snowstorm in New York brought the city life to a halt on December 26th 2010.”

My God! Snow storms in New York! This is not New York! This is Siberia! Apparently, Siberia arrived to New York!

All these astonishments were loudly said in the Siberian city of Yakutsk. Yup, I am in Yakutsk! And I am terrified! What’s going on?! Is it global freezing? Climate change, definitely!

P.S. Galya, thanks a lot for your amazing video! The video was done yesterday, when Merry Christmas was already over.

Wrangel Island in Russian Arctic. Photo by Sergey Gorshkov.

Sergey Gorshkov, a Russian wildlife photographer, returned from Wrangel Island, Russia’s Arctic, and brought photographs of what condition the reserve is in now. Sad views! Polluted… with a LOT of rusty barrels! As you know, the reserve is under UNESCO’s protection since 2004.

Read what Sergey Gorshkov says about what he saw in his blog post Footprints on the ground or Who is reponsible for our Arctic?.