The What If? of 1989

We need time for that.

They see what happened, not what could have happened.

Okay, fine. How do you know what would have happened without the aid?

) For a mirage to happen, the temperature gradient has to be much greater than that.

Even so, it is worth asking, What if Schabowski had not messed up?

Such transformations are the result of the unprecedented development of informatics and communications technology, which whether we like it or not will lead to coexistence in abstract and concrete terms.

Halappanavar died from septicemia, which her family is certain would not have developed if the termination had been carried out.

Imagine if our ancestors had made a similar valuation in the past, deciding to protect swampland at all cost.

Estimates of the fiscal multiplier must be based on an assumption or a model that says what would have happened in the absence of government spending of some type.

One wonders what would have happened if Luzhkov needed to face re election (his term expires in October 2011).

But the opening of the peace talks in Washington, DC, would not have happened without the full engagement of the US and other international partners.

But the middle ground observers are right that one cannot prove what would have happened otherwise.

The BBC news web site already has an occasional column rounding up the writings of Iraqi bloggers and I think that without GVO, none of this would have happened.

When are we going to do it? Are we going to wait 10 to 15 years for this to happen or are we going to finally have this political will to make it happen in the next two years?

We could only conjecture what would have happened if it had not postponed the day of reckoning for so long or if it had tried to put it off further.

Government ministers and EU representatives repeatedly cite the example of Iceland in pointing out what might have happened to Ireland if it had been outside the EU.

For example, the Kyoto Protocol would have cost trillions of dollars, but would have achieved a practically indiscernible difference in stemming the rise in global temperature.

None of those crimes has been solved, which would not be the case if Putin s dictatorship of law was anything more than a PR strategy.

For several decades, the denial of Palestinian rights, the Palestinian Israeli conflict and the occupation of Palestinian territories have radiated to create an environment of anger, insecurity and confrontation in the Middle East and the Islamic world.

In a third case, Europe at the end of the 1930 s, we do not know what would have happened had Europe not become a battlefield following Nazi Germany s invasion of Poland.

A Latin American default would have brought down the banking systems of all the major industrial countries, causing something like a replay of the Great Depression.

That, together with the counterfactual the economic calamity that would befall Germany following a collapse of the euro implies a unique obligation to maintain it.

Middle ground observers, meanwhile, typically conclude that one cannot settle the debate, because one cannot know what would have happened otherwise.

While the government is not giving me money, these special targeted tax breaks are no less government spending than they would be if the government sent me a check.

Despite the strides made recently against malnutrition, millions more people will be undernourished than would have been the case in the absence of official support for biofuels.

Just imagine what might have happened with the works of, say, Proust, Kafka, Musil, Faulkner, or Borges had they been subjected to mass market competition like shoes or cosmetics.

Now, the IMF offers the following reassurance You may be stingy, you may not be living up to your commitments, but the money probably wouldn t have made much difference anyway.

Faced with the North s dangerous nuclear game, we should ask what would have happened if, over the last 20 some years, the North Korea problem had been approached with the sagacity of Metternich and Kennedy.

Nita in her blog My Writings tries to give a definite answer regarding why this is happening now after all these years, she also believes that this scenario wouldn t have occurred if not for the US Immigration Control.

If enacted, Brown Kaufman would have broken up the six biggest banks in America, a senior Treasury official said. If we d been for it, it probably would have happened.

Imagine if our ancestors had made a similar valuation in the past, deciding to protect swampland at all cost. Much of lower Manhattan would still be a swamp, rather than being turned into the powerhouse of New York City, at a huge cost to society.

Ensure that homeowners and small investors do not absorb too much loss, for their only crime was to accept bad risks, which they would not have done in a world of properly diversified portfolios.

For all the fanfare surrounding financial innovation, this crisis is remarkably similar to past financial crises, except that the complexity of new financial products reduced transparency, aggravating fear about what might happen should there not be a massive public bailout.

A Latin American default would have brought down the banking systems of all the major industrial countries, causing something like a replay of the Great Depression. Exposure to Mexican debt alone represented some 90 of the capitalization of major US banks.

Sadly, North Korea has not received such far sighted statesmanship. Faced with the North s dangerous nuclear game, we should ask what would have happened if, over the last 20 some years, the North Korea problem had been approached with the sagacity of Metternich and Kennedy.

But converting forest to farmland (which is brighter than forest) and adding smog particles to the atmosphere (which reflect sunlight) have increased the reflection of solar radiation, thus tending to offset some of the global warming that would otherwise have occurred.

While there was less American leadership than one would have hoped, indeed expected under the circumstances, many participants were simply relieved that America did not put up obstacles to reaching a global consensus, as would have been the case if George W. Bush were still president.