Ketchikan has job potential. Alaska had 21 years of job gains up until 2009. After a year without, Alaska added 1,800 jobs in 2010 and 5,200 in 2011, according to the Alaska Department of Labor.

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Former Ketchikan resident Mike Thomas, 47, died Dec. 20, 2011, in Mohave, Ariz. He was born in Salem, Ore., on Nov. 25, 1964, but was raised in Ketchikan.

Alaska's got climate, all right. And now it's going to have the country's first regional climate science center.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar made the announcement Thursday, naming the 49th state as the site for the first of eight such planned centers. It's fitting that the "host institution" for the center will be the University of Alaska Anchorage, though unfortunately, the center itself will be off campus.

Salazar said the centers "will better connect our scientists with land managers and the public," according to The Associated Press.

We're relieved that the center will focus on effects, and not causes, of climate change, the latter being the subject of ongoing and sometimes acrimonious debate - especially in a state which has a whole lot of polar bears, but now has to make sure that, in the future, we bring their levels up to . . . a whole lot of polar bears.

The centers are part of Interior's "first coordinated strategy to address current and future effects of climate change on U.S. land, water, oceans, fish, wildlife and cultural resources," the AP reports.

For the moment, we await with interest the centers' development.