For almost one hundred years, Alaskans have been shedding their parkas. The Associated Press had reported that the “unusual temperature of the arctic indicates remarkable change [has] taken place in [the] frozen zone,” according to a headline in the Anchorage Daily Times – 93 years ago. Icebergs are growing scarcer and glaciers are disappearing says the report. The archives of Alaskan history confirm that our hundreds of miles of Arctic Ocean shoreland up here will someday be quite valuable beachfront property.

See Also Alaska Policy Forum

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For decades, the ferries of the Alaska Marine Highway System have been home to some of the most gloriously quirky bars in the 49th state. As the ferries, 11 of them now, make their runs along Alaska’s south central coast, the Aleutian Islands and the Inside Passage of southeast Alaska and British Columbia, they collect all manner of passengers, from fishermen, oil workers, military personnel and adventure travelers to big fans of the ferries’ communal watering holes. The bars came with names like the Pitch & Roll aboard Motor Vessel Tustumena, and some had deliciously divey décor, as on Motor Vessel Columbia: shiny lamé wallpaper, gold Naugahyde booths and dimmer bulbs across the ceiling.

But the bars are no more. In April, faced with a $3.5 billion budget deficit due to falling oil revenue, state officials shuttered the last of the bars on the six ferries that had them.

During summer’s high travel season, travelers wanting to wet their whistles on long journeys (some as long as four days) have had to make do by brown-bagging it in their staterooms – a luxury not enjoyed by the many ferry passengers who sleep in tents, deck chairs or observation lounge seats to save money.

See Full Story at NYTimes

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“It’s very touching to be able to feel like you’re part of something so important. It’s history,” said Karen Sunderland, one of the preservation volunteers, while holding a file from 1884 that marked the first recordings of the Alaska Territorial Courts. Sunderland worked alongside her husband, Merrill, and fellow LDS missionaries Diana and Doyle Rasmussen. The two couples were the last of four to take shifts for several months at a time on the project, backed by the nonprofit FamilySearch.

The organization’s mission for gathering, recording and preserving records is a global effort that puts fading documents in a place where they can “live” virtually forever on the internet.

While FamilySearch.org serves primarily as a free place to help “people connect with their ancestors,” according to the organization’s website, this project has also helped the State of Alaska dot some i’s and cross some t’s when it comes to records keeping.

State Archivist Dean Dawson oversaw this digitizing of state records and said what the FamilySearch volunteers did goes beyond the $1 million in funds saved through volunteer time. “They more than met our expectations with their quality of product,” Dawson said, explaining that the more than 1,101,839 images of archived birth and death records, court and probate records and other historical documents will be ready for public viewing online in about four months.

See Full Story at Juneau Empire

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Sen. Dan Sullivan had been on the tarmac at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, first in line to greet President Obama as he began his historic three-day visit to the Frontier State.

Sullivan, his wife and his daughter were also on hand for Obama’s powerful climate change speech at the conclusion of the State Department’s Conference on Global Leadership in the Arctic: Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement and Resilience.

Separately, Sullivan met privately with national ministers who flew to Anchorage for the climate change summit.

During Obama’s visit, many other Alaska Republicans and state business leaders avoided the president’s public appearances.

After all, the Democratic president has outlawed oil and gas development in thousands of acres of Alaska lands in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and parts of the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska and offshore Arctic Ocean.

But Sullivan viewed his limited access to the chief executive as a chance to lobby for Alaskan issues. “I think anytime a leader of the country, and in this case leaders of the other nations, shine a spotlight on Alaska, it’s an opportunity,” he explained.

During his meetings with foreign officials, Sullivan said he discussed problems of Arctic security. “I’ve heard a lot of concern about the Russian militarization of the Arctic, the fact that Vladimir Putin is building huge forces in the Arctic and the United States is actually looking at reducing them. I think that’s a strategic mistake.”

See Full Story at www.eenews.net

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“All in all, I don’t think it could have gone better,” he said.

Walker was invited to fly aboard Air Force One on the trip from Washington, D.C. He said his points during the conversation with Obama largely focused on easing hurdles to resource development, allowing the state to better control its future.

Walker said he emphasized declining oil production through the trans-Alaska pipeline as an ongoing concern, as well as prohibition on development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He also praised Obama administration moves to allow offshore Arctic drilling and grant Medicaid waivers to Alaska.

Walker said Obama seemed open and engaged during their discussion, as well as throughout his Alaska visit. “This is our time for Alaska to tell its story, and I was very insistent that I needed to be able to do that,” Walker said.

Walker said he expects his time with Obama will help him better state the case for Alaska in the future — if not with the president, then with aides and advisors who surround him. He said that meeting those influential voices helped him make valuable contacts.

“The most beneficial for me and I think Alaska, is I got to meet his key people and the people around him,” he said. “That I couldn’t have done any place else.”

See Full Story at Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

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Obama’s trip to Alaska is over, but his crusade to save us from global warming continues. The president recently concluded a three-day trip to Alaska, which began on August 31:

Alaska’s glaciers are melting faster too, threatening tourism and adding to rising seas. And if we do nothing, Alaskan temperatures are projected to rise between six and twelve degrees by the end of the century, changing all sorts of industries forever.

This is all real. This is happening to our fellow Americans right now. In fact, Alaska’s governor recently told me that four villages are in “imminent danger” and have to be relocated. Already, rising sea levels are beginning to swallow one island community.

Still, while global warming might animate some within the Obama coalition and the larger Democratic base, most don’t see it as a serious threat, according to Gallup. That’s not to say that they don’t believe this natural phenomena is happening–they do. They just don’t seem to care–and given how this president dredges up partisan feelings whenever he speaks about the issues; we shouldn’t expect the needle to move in either direction on this one. Most Americans are more concerned about jobs, the economy, and the direction of the country. Not glaciers that have been melting since 1815.

See Full Story at Townhall

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Throughout President Obama’s tour of Alaska last week, he spoke at length about efforts to reduce the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. He spoke very little about his support for Arctic Ocean drilling.

The drilling policy could affect the global climate much more than any of Obama’s climate-friendly initiatives.

“One of the reasons I came up here is to really focus on what is probably the biggest challenge our planet faces,” President Obama said. “If there’s one thing that threatens opportunity and prosperity for everybody, wherever we live, it’s the threat of a changing climate.”

Alaska is exempt from that plan. The president did not mention one of his policies that does have direct relevance in Kotzebue and the rest of Alaska.

The U.S. Geological Survey says more than 20 billion barrels of oil can be recovered from beneath the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. If that oil is burned in engines and homes and businesses, it would pump many times more carbon dioxide into the sky than the president’s big clean power plan would keep out of the sky.

“Approximately 15-times greater,” Lois Epstein, an engineer with The Wilderness Society in Anchorage, said. Her group has been opposed to drilling in the Arctic Ocean for mostly non-climate reasons.

She says Obama’s approval of Arctic drilling is inconsistent with his big push to fight climate change.

See Full Story at Alaska Public Media

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According to Sarah Palin, the president missed a lot while here.

While here, he enjoyed spectacular autumn weather which he commemorated with many selfies on a stick. He danced, he held a fish, he hiked a glacier (thankfully not the Mendenhal Glacier, for that chunk of ice is, literally, the size of Rhode Island. Instead, he enjoyed one of the other 100,000 Alaskan glaciers). And, he renamed a mountain…our mountain…the tallest peak on the North America continent.

Unlike most tourists, the President heads home now with his enormous fleet of transport vehicles – ironically after plenty of finger pointing on this Global Warming tour. Astoundingly, with just this one trip, a bigger carbon footprint was created than what 33 cars combined would create in an entire year.

From his many entertaining Instagram pictures, it looks like he enjoyed his trip, thankfully! Hard not to in the ever-changing ebb and flow of God’s Northern grandeur that has evolved with natural cyclic phenomenons, like tides rising and falling, glaciers advancing and receding, trees growing and dying in this energy-rich land that’s been reshaping itself since the beginning of time.

Residents here are thankful when far-away decision makers who control the vast majority of Alaska’s land and resources give us the time of day; hopefully his was an impacting trip.

Here are a few things he missed: The Hubbard Glacier…which is actually growing; Five Chinese warships off our Alaska coast; The vast untapped natural resources trapped in the desolate ANWR region; Alaska’s 22,000-plus active duty military personnel proudly fighting for our freedom; among others.

See Full Story at IJReview

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In the wake of President Obama’s visit, Alaskans are still sorting out the significance of new climate initiatives, cultural recognition, and more. But there’s lingering frustration among one particularly vocal group, who found that all the president’s messages came from the same place: His staff.

Obama was in Alaska for two-and-a-half days. In that time he made an important speech on the imminent threats of climate change, announced new programs on Arctic research and community relocation, and sped up the timeline for a new ice breaker. During that same stretch of time he did not take a single question from the press.

“There were no opportunities to ask questions, whatsoever,” said Hannah Colton, who covered the president’s visit to Dillingham for KDLG.

“There was not a single opportunity to ask the president questions,” KNOM News Direct Matthew Smith said from Kotzebue.

“He did not take any questions,” APRN’s Liz Ruskin told News Director Lori Townsend during Obama’s trip to Exit Glacier near Seward. Asked why the press was on a separate boat from the president in a tour of Resurrection Bay, Ruskin replied, “I think that helps us take better pictures of him.”

See Full Story at Alaska Public Media

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President Obama has ventured where no other U.S. president has gone before — the Arctic Circle. But his trip there coincides with another ethereal cause where no other leader of the Free World has traveled: the curbing of climate change and the attempts to win approval in Congress and the courts.

During his trip to Alaska this week, the president sought to underscore his message that fixing climate change is an urgent cause while at the same time, letting the pictures and the people tell the story. There, the natives spoke of how their communities are literally drowning.

And while Mr. Obama has taken this issue — and the environmental cause — further than any of his predecessors, he remains constrained in his advocacy as he is also trying to buoy the American economy. The waters are muddied, so to speak, in that increased fossil fuel production has been an economic lifeline — even while the president pushes for steady regulatory curbs on carbon.

Yet, his approach is entirely realistic, and ironically, given a tacit endorsement by some of this country’s biggest oil companies. That is, President Obama’s approach is to foster both the public and private support for new green energy technologies, which at some point will reach a critical mass and inch their way into the mainstream of American commerce. Essentially, the free market will work — with a little push from the public sector.

See Full Story at Forbes

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