Techcordance

Big Melt?

The world’s most famous climate change expert is at the center of a massive controversy as the leading environmental science institute he heads scrambled to explain its assertion that the Himalayan glaciers will melt completely in 25 years.
Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and director general of the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in New Dehli, India, said this week that the U.N. body was studying how its 2007 report to the United Nations derived information that led to its famous conclusion: that the glaciers will melt by 2035.
Today, the IPCC issued a statement offering regret for the poorly vetted statements. “The Chair, Vice-Chairs, and Co-chairs of the IPCC regret the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures,” the statement says, though it goes short of issuing a full retraction or reprinting the report.
Pachauri told Reuters on Monday that the group was looking into the issue, and planned to “take a position on it in the next two or three days.”

March

While pro-life supporters marched in Washington, D.C., on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Friday, an abortion-related trial began in Kansas.Scott Roeder confessed to killing Dr. George Tiller who was one of the few late term abortion providers in the country.As Roeder’s murder trial gets underway on the 37th anniversary of the ruling that legalized abortion, activists on both sides of the issue focused in.The prosecution began by playing 911 calls from witnesses.Police say Roeder walked into a Kansas church last May, and shot Tiller at point blank range and threatened two others.”I saw out of my right vision. I saw a flash and I heard a pop, to me sounded like a balloon popping,” witness Kathy Wegner recalled. “Then I just saw Dr. Tiller just fall flat on his back. I just saw him flat on his back and I thought, ‘why is he there?’”

Disarray

Scott Brown’s shot heard ’round the political world left congressional Democrats stunned and befuddled about what to do next in the yearlong push to overhaul the country’s health care system.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and his top lieutenants emerged from a Wednesday morning strategy session with no clear path to proceed in the health care fight, while Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) could only repeat her well-worn promise that Congress “will move forward.”
“People just have different feelings about this,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.). “This was obviously not a good day for us. To be honest, you have to sit back and reassess and move forward.”