Alaska: Alaska's Foreclosures Third-Lowest in the Nation; Foreclosures Fell in 2008 in Ketchikan - Housing experts across the nation are comparing housing woes and foreclosure rates to those of the Great Depression. But you don't have to be an octogenarian to remember such hard times for the Alaska housing market. The recent spate of foreclosures in the national headlines may remind a few sourdoughs of the late 1980s bust in Alaska when jobs were slashed, entire residential blocks were turned over to the banks and more than 8 percent of the state's population fled to the Lower 48.

According to Alaska Economic TRENDS, a magazine published by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development, the national credit collapse will ripple through the Alaska economy in unpredictable ways, but despite weaknesses in other markets around the country, Alaska's housing market has so far shown resilience compared to the nation as a whole by many indicators, particularly foreclosure rates. Alaska foreclosure rates have remained low compared to the nation's, owing to the health of the state's housing market and its economy as a whole.

The Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development collects foreclosure data based on public records. An analysis of the numbers dating back to 1980 revealed that there were 1,131 foreclosures in Alaska in 2008, a 36 percent increase from 2007.

The increase in the number of foreclosures in 2008 was largely driven by the Anchorage and Palmer Recording Districts. The Anchorage Recording District had 458 foreclosures in 2008, 152 more foreclosures than in 2007. The Palmer Recording District had 275 foreclosures in 2008, 88 more than 2007. - More...
Wednesday - June 17, 2009

Alaska: Alaska researchers contribute to national climate change report - Two University of the Alaska Fairbanks researchers are among key contributors to a new national report that details visible effects of climate change in the United States and how today's choices stand to affect the future.

The report, "Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States," is the first to focus on observed and projected climate change and its effects specifically in the United States. UAF scientists A. David McGuire and John Walsh were part of a consortium of experts from 13 U.S. government science agencies, major universities and research institutes that produced the report.

"A key point from the study is that from everything we're seeing in terms of impacts, it's clear that we are committed to more warming," said McGuire, a landscape ecology professor and researcher with the UAF Institute of Arctic Biology.

The report is written in plain language and is intended to better inform policymakers and members of the public. It is not intended to direct policymakers to take any one approach over another, but rather emphasizes that the choices people make now will determine the severity of climate change effects in the future.

"Almost no policy action could be implemented that would mitigate the factors causing the warming fast enough that we wouldn't experience any impacts," said McGuire, who is also an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey's Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. "It's up to our society to make decisions about the degree of warming and impacts we are willing to deal with."

Over the past 50 years, Alaska has warmed at more than twice the rate of the rest of the United States. Its annual average temperature has increased 3.4°F, while winters have warmed even more, by 6.3°F. - More...
Wednesday - June 17, 2009

Alaska: Sun stands still on Saturday solstice By NED ROZELL - "Did you feel it?" a friend asked on June 20th, at about 9:45 p.m. on a sunny Alaska night.

No, it wasn't another earthquake. At that moment, the sun paused on its journey around our northern horizon, and we, for a second or two, experienced summer solstice.

Solstice is the precise time when the top of the world nods deepest toward the sun. Here's what it's like when solstice (a word derived from Latin words meaning "sun standing still") arrives in Alaska:

Darkness, our old friend, has vanished. Even in Southeast, a person can read a book outside at midnight without a headlamp. Forget the aurora; it's still there, dancing in the upper atmosphere, but we can't see it. Stars, too, are a memory.

Male songbirds fill the forests with melody. Mother birds warm millions of little eggs, in nests from Attu to Annette. Alaska is bursting with migrants, here to exploit one of the richest populations of insects on the planet. Ravens, chickadees, and other winter comrades share the boom.

Alaska creatures that depend on darkness-little brown bats, flying squirrels, and owls-somehow make a go of it when rays of sunlight illuminate their roosts at 11 p.m. Perhaps more appreciative of the constant light are the millions of salmon shooting upstream like fading torpedoes. When they stop, they will mate and die, their bodies enriching water, soil, bird and mammal.

All that solar radiation striking the tundra, the trees, the pavement and the people has a profound effect. Plants grow with such speed that gardeners wish they had photographed the tomato stems each day, because they swear they are six inches taller. Those gardeners savor the sun on their skin, which converts sunlight to vitamin D, which will show up in their bloodstreams in one month.

Glaciers flood their gravel arteries with meltwater, surging in the afternoon and relaxing at night and early morning. They are shedding last winter's snowfall, and some are now losing blue ice that fell as snow hundreds of years ago, during a cold period called the Little Ice Age.

The solstice warmth is penetrating the ground, thawing the soil that froze last fall and winter. As the summer progresses, the heat will slowly penetrate to its maximum depth, sometimes thawing permafrost-ground that had remained frozen through the heat of at least two summers-another relic of a very cold time gone by. - More...
Wednesday - June 17, 2009

Science: Beaked, bird-like dinosaur tells story of finger evolution - Scientists have discovered a unique beaked, plant-eating dinosaur in China. The finding, they say, demonstrates that theropod, or bird-footed, dinosaurs were more ecologically diverse in the Jurassic period than previously thought, and offers important evidence about how the three-fingered hand of birds evolved from the hand of dinosaurs.

The discovery is reported in a paper published in this week's edition of the journal Nature.

"This work on dinosaurs provides a whole new perspective on the evolution of bird manual digits," said H. Richard Lane, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the research.

"This new animal is fascinating, and when placed into an evolutionary context it offers intriguing evidence about how the hand of birds evolved," said scientist James Clark of George Washington University.

Clark, along with Xu Xing of the Chinese Academy of Science's Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, made the discovery. Clark's graduate student, Jonah Choiniere, also was involved in analyzing the new animal.

"This finding is truly exciting, as it changes what we thought we knew about the dinosaur hand," said Xu. "It also brings conciliation between the data from million-year-old bones and molecules of living birds."

Limusaurus inextricabilis ("mire lizard who could not escape") was found in 159 million-year-old deposits located in the Junggar Basin of Xinjiang, northwestern China. The dinosaur earned its name from the way its skeletons were preserved, stacked on top of each other in fossilized mire pits.

A close examination of the fossil shows that its upper and lower jaws were toothless, demonstrating that the dinosaur possessed a fully developed beak. Its lack of teeth, short arms without sharp claws and possession of gizzard stones suggest that it was a plant-eater, though it is related to carnivorous dinosaurs. - More...
Wednesday - June 17, 2009

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KETCHIKAN POOL BOND VOTE by Ken Bylund - Thanking Mr. Damstedt, for Wednesday's, June 17th article in the Ketchikan Daily News titled, 'Pool bond vote moves forward'. If anyone missed it, more recommended reading! In the end, it appears everyone in the borough will be paying for a $23.5 million bond [loan] for the next thirty years. The cost [for us] will be $23,500,000 [23.5 million] + 15% contingency [~$3,500,000] -- double this in interest, ~ fifty million USD [$50,000,000] for a swimming pool that roughly 500 people out of the entire population of our borough... will enjoy. How does this meet any standard of providing for the general welfare of the community? - More...
Wednesday - June 17, 2009

Letting the public know By Eileen Small - I realize that the last Tea Party event came up rather suddenly and thus it was difficult to get any advance news coverage. Those of us involved in the Tea Party Patriot Move didn't want to be guilty of this error a second time. - More...
Wednesday - June 17, 2009

Boys & Girls Club By Chris Corrao - The Boys & Girls Club is now open with its new summer hours. The Club is open Monday - Thursday 1:00 PM - 6:00 PM at 645 Jackson Street (the National Guard Armory). - More...
Wednesday - June 17, 2009

THANK YOU TO THOSE WHO COME FORWARD TO SUPPORT OUR YOUTH. By Roberta "Bobbie" McCreary - A very BIG thank you to the following people WITHOUT WHICH we would not have had a really cool YOUTH ART AUCTION that earned nearly $1000 for our young artists. - More...
Monday PM - June 15, 2009

THANK YOU! TO OUR COMMUNITY FROM THE HOT SHOTS PAINTBALL GROUP By Roberta "Bobbie" McCreary - WE cannot say enough to thank those who come forward to help our youth programs succeed. Last month, we benefitted from over a $1,000 of product and services donated to provide wood chips to make the paintball field safe for players. Thank you to Mike Stewart (First City Wood Haulers) and Wade King Trucking who showed up at 7am on a Sunday morning to deliver 14 loads of wood chips to the field. And to Merril Stulkin who brought his equipment out to the field and spread the chips. - More...
Monday PM - June 15, 2009

Regarding More AK Airlines Fees By LeiLani Lake - It may sound good Ms. Steiner to say that another airline coming to Ketchikan would resolve our airfare and additional luggage fee problems but it won't. Alaska Airlines is only one of many airlines that now charge to your first bag. Actually I believe it was American Airlines that started this trend. - More...
Monday PM - June 12, 2009

An Educated and Experienced Description of the Life cycle of a Dungeness Crab* or Why They Should Not Be Fished in the Summer By Larry Painter - When I first came to S. E. Alaska in the late 60's we pot fished Dungeness Crab and Spot Prawns all year 'round. There was no closed season for either like there was for Salmon that I seined only in the summer and fall with openings regulated by Fish and Game. As I gained experience I noticed that Dungeness Crab started showing soft shells around late February. Through the summer they all go through a soft shell stage. Around September to October they are hard shelled and full of meat. At this time they are in prime condition! That's the time to start fishing! - More...
Friday - June 12, 2009

Logjam By Elaine Price - You need to hear and understand the story of two little boys in Coffman Cove. These two little boys are supported by a logger, a "faller" to be exact. His paychecks earned from the timber industry work he does provides for these two little boys and their mother.

These two little boys are vitally important to the future of Coffman Cove, to the future of the school here, and to the infrastructure, other jobs, and many businesses across Prince of Wales Island. How can two little boys from Coffman Cove be that important to a regional economy? - More...
Friday - June 12, 2009

Suislaw Forest By Michael Moyer - My comment is directed to Don Borders and all that may believe that just because the forests of Washington and Oregon have vegetation on the hills that all is well in the woods there. Not so. When my Great Grandfather worked in the woods of Washington they didn't use trucks to haul the logs out, they built railroads. They cut everything. They choked the creeks and dredged the rivers, dammed them up and then blew the dams so the logs would flood downstream. They messed up the hills and rivers so bad that even today the fish haven't come back and the original river channels are far from what they used to be. - More...
Friday - June 12, 2009

More AK Airlines Fees By Julie Steiner - It's not bad enough that Alaska Airlines increases their fares for flying to an astronomical price, that they now have to charge each person a fee to take their bags with them? Effective July 15th, they are going to charge EVERYONE a fee of $15 for the first checked bag. And the fee for each additional bag keeps increasing. - More...
Friday - June 12, 2009

Akasofu's predictions By John Ziraldo - Thank you for publishing the article about Syun-Ichi Akasofu's predictions. The continuing lies by the IPCC about climate change, and the political will of the far left to use these lies to impoverish us makes it very critical that articles like these get published. - More...
Friday - June 12, 2009

Traffic, Ferries and Bridges, Oh My! By Marshall H. Massengale - I have been a regular SitNews visitor and Ketchikan watcher for the past nearly two years and have read any number of articles, comments, editorials, opinions, letters, and official documents concerning many of the borough's frequently discussed and debated transportation issues. These issues have included the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" debacle, vehicle traffic congestion, slow drivers, fast drivers, parking, ferry boats in and out of repair, and now the latest rant about a paddle wheel boat that kicks up a wake in the Narrows. - More...
Friday - June 12, 2009

Create Jobs for Americans By Donald A. Moskowitz - A while ago I read that Bill Gates and Mayor Michael Bloomberg were planning on donating a total of $500 million to reduce the incidence of smoking in developing countries, especially China. I haven't seen any recent information on this subject, but I believe they made a commitment to this ridiculous project. - More...
Friday - June 12, 2009

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