Headline - June 27, 2008 (LiveScience): North Pole Could Be Ice Free in 2008
Story in San Luis Obispo Tribune (June 26, 2008) has the line: "More than 4,000 low-income San Luis Obispo County residents could be denied health coverage if deep cuts in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget are approved, according to a study being released today."
Headline - June 27, 2008 (USAToday): Honey Bee crisis could lead to higher food prices
Headline - June 27, 2008 (NBC17 Raleigh, NC): Easley: Drought Could Be Worse Than Last Year
Nothing provokes the fear response in readers than the word "could" in a news story. Liberal editors love that word. It can mean anything. You can start any story off with the word 'could' and you have just made news. What they don't tell you are the other side of the coin possibilities. The "North Pole Could Be Ice Free in 2008" story actually says that it is a "50-50" chance that the North Pole could be ice free. Well that is true about just about everything, isn't it? You can be struck by lightning... or you could not. You could lose your job tomorrow, develop an incurable disease, have a loved one killed in a drive-by shooting, lose your home to foreclosure, be a victim of terrorism... or you could not. The economy could slide into depression... or not. The earth could be hit by an asteroid... or it could not. There is an endless amount of stories that can be produced just by inserting the word "could" into the story. With the Drive-by Media, almost 95% of the use of the word "could" is in the negative context. If the story has anything to do with projections about the Bush Administration, the Iraq War, Global Warming, the economy, unemployment, or home foreclosures, it will most certainly be negative. The word 'could' is also tied to studies in an endless parade of liberals using the fallacy of the "appeal to authority" to justify their fraudulent positions. Liberals always depend on some figure of authority telling the rest of us how we should be living our lives.
How is it that any of the above possibilities can be considered 'news' in the first place? Because an "expert" says so, that's how.
"Could" and DDT
Look at any story about product safety. Just because the possibilities exist that one thing or the other you enjoy or makes your life more convenient somehow makes a lab rat somewhere sick, you, or more importantly, your children, could be poisoned, a product should be taken off of the shelves. This is how it came to be that the most effective fighter of Malaria in the third-world, DDT, came to be banned for use everywhere. Rachel Carson's 1962 book "Silent Spring" created such a stir on the possibilities that DDT 'could' have widespread effects on the ecosystem and human life, without evidence to support the claim, that the EPA banned the use of the pesticide in 1972. The rest of the world followed suit shortly thereafter. What are we left with because DDT 'could' be harmful to the environment and humans? We have the idiots on American Idol going over to Africa to ask you and me to give money so that African children can have bed nets to ward off Malaria spreading Mosquitoes. Bed nets!?!?!?! WTF, over? Why not just use the banned DDT, eradicate the freakin' Mosquitoes and be done with the disease of Malaria once and for all? We can't spray DDT in Africa because the American Bald Eagle, 15,000 miles away could be threatened by DDT usage. What utter nonsense. I can only hope that St. Peter holds Rachel Carson and her supporters responsible for each and every death caused by Malaria in an African country because her "could" ended the use of the most effective Malaria fighter in the world.
"Could" and Global Warming
The area of so-called man-made global warming is rife with stories about all the things that the global warming hoax 'could' produce. In a quick Google search on "Global Warming could", here are the things that news stories said global warming could cause:
more thunderstorms
no polar bears
cannibalism (thanks Ted Turner)
global cooling
mass extinction
more war
economic devastation
the next Ice Age
more cardiovascular disease
increases in Malaria (see above for the real reason why)
increases in kidney stone disease
more wildfires
increases in Asthma in England
4.5 billion people dying by 2012 because of permafrost melting
wetter grasslands
damaged French wine industry
displace birds
decrease ocean volume through evaporation
increase ocean volume threatening coastlines
colder water causing more hurricanes
warmer water causing more hurricanes
damaged crocodile reproduction
worsen US oil output
food riots
wipe out most birds
a frozen Europe
a strained Northeast power grid
a water crisis in India
on and on and on
Even the supposed cures for global warming 'could' do such things as damage the ozone layer. The planting of trees as part of the bogus "carbon offsets" can actually make global warming worse by reflecting sunlight back up into the atmosphere. How do "experts" come up with some of these predictions of gloom and doom? Since "experts" have no real evidence that any global warming has occurred at all, they have to create artificial circumstances that would allow them to say that global warming could happen. They do this with computer modeling. One of the key terms within the computing world is GIGO, or "garbage in, garbage out". Used mostly in computer programming, the GIGO concept really means that your program will only be as good as the code that you write for it. The same holds true with all of these global warming computer models that have sprung up in recent years. Since these "experts" know that there is no control group for everything in the atmosphere, they have to recreate it in a "controlled” environment. But what these "experts" don't tell you is that they don't know all of the variables required to produce a truly accurate representation of the earth's atmosphere. For instance, the "experts" have no clue exactly how much precipitation occurs daily around the world. Since precipitation is the main mechanism for the earth to cool itself, it is a major factor in determining what the local temperature of a given region is. Furthermore, there is no global temperature. The statistic of 1 degree temperature increase over the last 100 years is an average of averages at different reporting locations around the world. So, the computer models are really, really rough guestimates of what the guy programming the model thinks ought to be going on out there. The use of computer modeling is what led the dimwits from the Department of the Interior in Washington D.C. to place the polar bear on the Endangered Species list. (http://www.doi.gov/news/06_News_Releases/061227.html)
Fortunately, there are several right-minded people out there willing to fight this insanity of computer modeling. (http://www.gov.state.ak.us/news.php?id=1163) Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has stated the State of Alaska will sue the Department of the Interior in Federal court to prevent the polar bear from being placed on the Endangered Species List.
If the loony left were actually interested in producing a valid computer model of the earth's atmosphere, their "experts" would do more research on how the atmosphere works and do a better job of capturing atmospheric variables in their models, these doomsayer predictions would have more credence. But then again, that wouldn't serve the interests of the global warming doomsday cultists.
One last word on the "North Pole Could Be Ice Free in 2008" story. This is not the first time this story has been circulated. Actually, this story appears every year. What has changed is that the out-years have become shorter and shorter until this year where the doom is this year, supposedly.
BBC News (December 12, 2007): "Arctic Ice Free by 2013" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7139797.stm
UK Guardian (September 5, 2007): "Arctic could be Ice Free in 23 years" http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/sep/05/climatechange.sciencenews
The University Center for Atmospheric Research (December 11, 2006): "Abrupt Ice Retreat Could Produce Ice-Free Arctic Summers by 2040" http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2006/arctic.shtml
LiveScience (November 3, 2005): "Arctic Summer could be Ice Free by 2105" http://www.livescience.com/environment/050823_ice_free.html (Not British, which kind of explains why they are off on t
UK Guardian (November 3, 2004): "Global Warming 'will leave Arctic Ice Free".... by 2070. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2004/nov/03/environment.environment
Oh, but how soon we forget this article from the ancient time period called "The 1990's" (which is only referenced to bolster Bill Clinton's ego about how great life was 'back then'). An article from the website "NewScientist" dated April 10, 1993 is entitled "Science: Algae tell of Arctic's ice-free past" (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13818682.900-science-algae-tell-of-arctics-icefree-past-.html). The article says that ancient algae dated 7,000 years ago shows that much of the Arctic Ocean was pretty much ice free. So this is nothing new? What were humans doing 7,000 years ago to cause all of this Arctic ice thaw? Must be all the cars that the Sumerians were driving around back then.
Other uses for "Could"
Media loves to use the word 'could' to hypothesis about other projected disasters. The SLO Tribune article referenced above stated in the body that the people most in danger of losing health-care benefits under Governor Schwarzenegger's budget were people that had difficulty speaking English and who had transitory home situation. For those of you in Rio Linda, CA (stealing from Rush for a second), that means illegal aliens would lose their access to our health care. The article never says "illegal aliens" anywhere in the article, but what other group of people is both transitory and have poor English skills? Why don't the writers of these "news stories" just come out and say, "Budget will hurt migrant worker health care" or something at least close to their prime concerns? Because they know that the average taxpayer in California would go "So what? They aren't supposed to be here in the first place."
The media also uses could to project nonexistent benefits. Today, (July 10, 2008) Yahoo! News had an article: "Study: As gas prices go up, auto deaths drop". So feel good and rejoice, America! The confiscatory high prices you are paying every time fill your tank are SAVING LIVES!!!! Hooray for high gas prices!!!! What a crock of horse manure! Truth is that these gas prices are high because liberal eco-communists in Congress WANT them high. Otherwise, they would drop the congressional ban, in concert with Bush dropping the executive order ban, and allow off-shore oil exploration. Mr. and Mrs. America would see gas prices drop by 30 cents in a week because the oil futures market would see oil on the market in the future. But that doesn't fit the policy shift the eco-communists want.
In the end, 'could' can and does mean anything the media wants it to mean. Usually, it results in policies that abridge our freedoms and do damage to our families' standard of living and way of life.