U.S. home seizures reached a record for the third time in five months in August as lenders completed the foreclosure process for thousands of delinquent owners, according to RealtyTrac Inc. Bloomberg’s Su Keenan reports. (Source: Bloomberg)

U.S. home seizures reached a record for the third time in five months in August as lenders completed the foreclosure process for thousands of delinquent owners, according to RealtyTrac Inc.

Bank repossessions climbed 25 percent from a year earlier to 95,364, the most since the Irvine, California-based data provider began keeping records in 2005. Foreclosure filings, including default and auction notices, fell 5 percent to 338,836. One out of every 381 U.S. households received a filing, RealtyTrac said today in a statement.

‘We’re on track for a record year for homes in foreclosure and repossessions,

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Washington (CNN) – A new poll indicates that only one in four Americans say they trust the government to do what is right always or most of the time, one explanation for the anti-incumbent sentiment in the country today.

According to CNN/Opinion Research Corporation national survey released Tuesday, 25 percent of the public indicates that they trust the government in Washington to do what’s is right most or all of the time, with 66 percent saying they trust the government to do what’s right only some of the time and eight percent saying they never trust the government.

Full results [pdf]

‘That lack of trust in government is not a recent phenomenon – except for a brief spike fueled by patriotism immediately after 9/11, a majority have not trusted the government since the early 1970s,’ says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

But the recession appears to have made matters worse.

‘Ten years ago, roughly four in ten said they trusted the government always or most of the time; that number dropped to the mid-to-low 30’s in the middle part of the decade, but then dropped to the 20s in 2008, where it has stayed ever since. The all-time low in CNN polls was in the […]

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Just when you thought the climate debate couldn’t get any more divisive, along comes an academic paper which looks into the ‘effects of gender on climate change knowledge and concern in the American public’. The headline conclusion? ‘Women exhibit slightly higher levels of both than do their male counterparts.’

Aaron M McCright, an associate professor at Michigan State University’s Department of Sociology whose paper is published in the September issue of the journal Population and Environment, examined eight years of data from Gallup’s annual environment poll and found that ‘women tend to believe the scientific consensus on global warming more than men’. However, he also discovered that his findings reinforced past research which suggests women lack confidence in their science comprehension.

‘Men still claim they have a better understanding of global warming than women, even though women’s beliefs align much more closely with the scientific consensus,’ he said. McCright added that the gender divide is likely to be explained by ‘gender socialisation’: boys learn that masculinity emphasises detachment, control and mastery, whereas girls develop traits of attachment, empathy and care. It’s these latter qualities which McCright believes makes women more likely to ‘feel concern about the potential dire consequences of global warming’.

After […]

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A top U.S. geographer says Canada will emerge as a major world power within 40 years as part of a climate-driven transformation of global trade, agriculture and geopolitics highlighted by the rise of the ‘Northern Rim’ nations.

UCLA scientist Laurence Smith, whose previous studies have documented the toll that climate change is taking on Arctic ecosystems and communities, examines the full range of effects of global warming — many of them positive for places such as Canada — in his new book The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization’s Northern Future, to be released next week.

Along with climate change, Smith identifies population growth, looming resource scarcity and global economic integration as the key forces shaping the planet’s immediate future.

‘In many ways, the New North is well positioned for the coming century even as its unique ecosystem is threatened by the linked forces of hydrocarbon development and amplifi ed climate change,’ states Smith, who describes in a UCLA-issued summary of his book how climate field research in Arctic communities exposed him to both the costs and benefits of a rapidly changing northern environment.

The book, to be released Sept. 23, suggests Canada and the other ‘NORCs’ — Northern Rim Countries — are […]

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WASHINGTON — Arctic sea ice melted over the summer to cover the third smallest area on record, US researchers said Wednesday, warning global warming could leave the region ice free in the month of September 2030.

Last week, at the end of the spring and summer ‘melt season’ in the Arctic, sea ice covered 4.76 million square kilometers (1.84 million square miles), the University of Colorado’s National Snow and Ice Data Center said in an annual report.

‘This is only the third time in the satellite record that ice extent has fallen below five million square kilometers (1.93 million square miles), and all those occurrences have been within the past four years,’ the report said.

A separate report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found that in August, too, Arctic sea ice coverage was down sharply, covering an average of six million square kilometers (2.3 million square miles), or 22 percent below the average extent from 1979 to 2000.

The August coverage was the second lowest for Arctic sea ice since records began in 1979. Only 2007 saw a smaller area of the northern sea covered in ice in August, NOAA said.

The record low for Arctic sea ice cover at the end […]

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