Yes, and it should tell you something that it contains 40% of the State population and when combined with.
And 64% of Arizona’s population lives in the Phoenix Metro area, 42% of New York's population lives in New York City (not the metro area, just New York), and an even 50% of Colorado's population lives in the Denver metro area.
What’s your point?
While some parts of Alaska are inhabitable, most of it is not on a large scale, I mean it's pretty telling that 90% of the population lives along the Southern coast.
Sounds about like the population distribution of California (don't know off the top of my head). So people like to live next to the ocean and in the warmer south. Doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out.
But it also doesn't mean that the rest of the state is uninhabitable. After all, there are 3x,000 people in Fairbanks (and 3 times that in the metro area), because... well... Fairbanks exists.
Also, I would'nt say it survives just fine considering they had a resource crisis a few months ago when ice blocked the port preventing ships from ducking to off-load their cargo.
You’re talking about the
refueling tanker stuck off the coast of Nome? The town of 3,500? Hardly a state wide resource crisis…
Fishing I'd agree with, otherwise I disagree, Timber is'nt exactly rare, and exists in places it's more easy/cheap to harvest.
Again, depends on how industry is developed. The timber industry isn’t just cutting down trees: off the top of my head, you’ve got the paper industry, in which Finland and Sweden are doing just fine.
The OP has a POD of the late 1800’s. A whole lot can happen in that time, and the question was: “…how many people can Alaska theoretically hold
if it utilized its environment and resources completely?”
In that time you could throw in a car industry, probably a good light aircraft industry, shipping (trans Pacific) maybe...
Why not? The OP was "theoretically" speaking.
You mean the Oil companies annual bribe to continue raping the land?
As soon as the Oil becomes to expensive to be worth it that will stop since the State government could'nt afford to do it without the profits from the Oil.
Um… Ok.
Japan only has 127 million people (ye, yes, I know, close enough).
That aside historically Japan did have some natural resources, they just al got used-up during Industrialization.
Japan has ALOT of Farmland; 11.6% of the countries land is Arable and overall 15,633.7 miles (25,160 Km) of land is irrigated, add to this the fact to that Japan has compact farms (as opposed to being spreadout) tha are usually built right next to cities. Yes, Japan is a net food importer, but for a country in its position it produces a massive amount of its own food as well.
(head scratching)…
Let’s do some maths…
Do you like maths? I do.
Japan: 127 m people (I’ll go with your more exact number)
Arable Land (as of 2009):
4.92m Hectors or 10.5m Acres
Meanwhile Alaska has theoretical arable land
estimated at 15~18m acres. Let’s round down to an even 10m, assuming an overly optimistic govt website.
That’s roughly on par with Japan.
Next, let’s assume the land is only half as productive (fair, I think, given the much shorter growing season).
If Japan’s economy is able to support 127m people on 10.5m acres (granted, owing to their wonder-economy, but again, the OP is asking for theoretical), let’s half the number per the above assumption to 63m, and then half it again assuming their economy isn’t anywhere near as productive (per capita) as Japan's.
And we’re still left with over 30m people.
But this is all theoretical per the OP’s question. So just how many people could Alaska support given maximum efficiency? I stand by my original statement that it could support as many people as are willing to move there given sufficient industrial and economic development. Singapore has no notable resources other than location, yet manages to support over 5 million people on less than 300 sq miles and zero arable land.
So,
theoretically, anything is possible, and the population could be whatever the TL makes it out to be.