Maybe you have seen Bethesda's statement that all 10 races are playable in Skyrim.

Now to my question: Argonians are lizards. Lizards are cold-blooded. How can they survive in Skyrim? Most reptilians are not able to survive in the cold for long. Is there a difference between lizards in the real world and Nirn?
Is there a reference in one of the books?

Argonians are Argonians, not lizards.

And with a warm pair of boots anything is possible.

Hah. What was his name again?

edit:

Basks-In-The-Sun, duh.

Even then they are still reptilians. Reptilians can not generate heat, so a warm pair of boots won't change anything.

Look up, a joke.

If you see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichthyosaur, some reports have classified them as warm blooded. There were also warm blooded reptiles, just none are known to be alive today. And besides, aren't Argonian's considered warm blooded?

And my fallback answer is Magic...

No, that's the miserable argonian in Solstheim who didn't wear boots. The argonian you are thinking of is Right-Wind, the headmaster of the Bruma Fighters Guild chapter who wears fur boots.

I think either applies to this situation as Right-Wind is a reference to the other guy.

It's a video game. The answer to all video gaming mysteries may be solved through that simple phrase.

You can do better than that. Especially in a Tamrielic setting.

My best answer is magic. Argonians are said to be gifted natural mages. Perhaps for some it manifests itself as a body-temperature regulating mechanism.

I figure it's because they have some characteristics of fish. And some fish can survive in very cold temperatures.

All moving animals produce heat. Metabolism does that . it is just they don't have a set specific body temperature. A large reptile would produce enough heat and not lose it fast and with clothes and armor would be warm enough to operate in Arctic temps. Also in fantasy worlds you have to suspend some "real world" facts.

Edit: The above poster puts forth another valid point. Some species have substances in their body similar to antifreeze. Although Argonians having come from hot humid areas wouldn't have that. Put it down to the Hist sap sustaining them in the cold. The same thing that makes them stand upright, talk and cast magick.....

Your assuming that Skyrim is Greenland. Better idea what Skyrim's setting is are either Norway or Canada. I probably bet its not ganna be that cold anyways.

As for what Argonians are, they are like a hybrid of lizard/frog/fish/tree. In other word, they have weird, exotic biosystem that we don't really know 100% of what is that or what it can do.

They eat more often.

A crocodile in Australia would eat once a month or less. If it moved to Norway it would probably do alright eating hot chicken soup 3 times a day.

There is a book that mentions wars in Skyrim with Argonian Mercenaries. In winter the Argonians would be slowed down, in Summer they would make progress. Not sure about the title. Wolf Queen I'd guess.

The same way your character could lie down on the ground for a week in the crater of Red Mountain.

hopefully there will be very few argonians in skyrim to begin with.

Indeed, they may have some physical similarities to lizards, but saying they're lizards is no more accurate than saying that elves are chimpanzees. If you're going to ask this question, you might as well also ask how dragons can survive in Skyrim, because dragons look kind of like lizards too, once you take the wings away.

And I'd imagine Argonians survive in Skyrim the same way they survive in Solstheim or the Jerall Mountains. While there aren't many of them in Bloodmoon (To be fair, the majority of the population on the island are Nords anyway. And free Argonians didn't make up that large a section of the population in Vvardenfell either. The boat owner at Fort Frostmoth is an Argonian, and although he complains about the cold and that he can't even get a pair of boots, it makes him uncomfortable, certainly, but does not affect his survival. Also, I believe one of the crew of the airship in that Bloodmoon quest is an Argonian, and though he is dead, like the rest of the crew, it's likely due to the airship crashing rather than the cold.

And how does that work? I don't know, it's not really explained, but I'm guessing that the reason is because, as a fantasy race with weird fantasy physiology, Argonians don't need to follow the same biological rules that real life lizards do. The fact they look somewhat similar doesn't change that.

Or... y'know, any dinosaur ever.

Also, Argonians don't make a lick of sense no matter how you look at it. They're humanoid lizards with gills who were in all likelihood created by sentient trees. And they can talk, and the females have mammary glands, or at least fatty tissue deposits, in the same area as a human's.

Realism does not apply in this situation.

Did I mention they're talking lizards?

And yet, climate is the issue upon which people refuse to suspend their disbelief.

As I've mentioned before, we have finned, scaled, water-breathing vertebrates in real life that can survive in very cold environments.

Also, some fish are partially warm-blooded. Argonians might be the same way; hence how it's hinted that they do benefit from insulating clothing.

I think a better question is how non-fish-like races can swim in freezing waters with no ill effects.

Yeah he seemed pretty fine other than being whiny about boots.

And now they can wear boots.

So there we have it.

But lets be fair, any race, other than nords, would also be extremely miserable if they didn't wear any boots on Solstheim.

for that matter how can fish swim in such waters being cold-blooded?

besides are Argonians reptialian in more than appearance? - perhaps we call them reptilian out of convenience.

the weaknesses of various races are defined in-game in the character creation menus. it's true that Nords are cold-resistant and dunmer fire-resistant but I remember nothing about any race being vulnerable to cold - is that definitive? well maybes the whys of that is what we can debate

Since evolution and life don't necessarily work the way they do in our own world, groups of animals like "reptile" don't really mean the same things they mean in our world necessarily. That's one way I look at it. And the Argonians are a unique sapient race one way or the other. I never assume anything about their biology as it's influenced heavily by the Hist, who are divine magical beings.