DA小组 第2次作业 argument 45

autumnbillowUID: 2830144

"Arcticdeer live on islands in Canada's arctic region. They search for food by movingover ice from island to island during the course of a year. Their habitat islimited to areas warm enough to sustain the plants on which they feed, and coldenough, at least some of the year, for the ice to cover the sea separating theislands, allowing the deer to travel over it. Unfortunately, according toreports from local hunters, the deer populations are declining. Since thesereports coincide with recent global warming trends that have caused the sea iceto melt, we can conclude that the decline in arctic deer populations is the resultof deer being unable to follow their age-old migration patterns across thefrozen sea."

In this argument, the author concluded thatthe deer population decline comes from the disability to migrate followingtheir age-old pattern. To support his conclusion, the author point out that thereports coincide with recent global warming trends. At first glance, the author’sargument appears to somewhat appealing, while a close examination will revealus the invalidity of it. This argument is problematic for the reasons I willprovide.

First of all, this argument rests on thereports of the local hunters. Since we know that the arctic deer will not perchat one certain place, they are travelling around from one island to the other.It is possible that the deer happen to rest one place that people neverdiscover. The reduction probably is just a false front. Unless the author canexclude the possibility that the deer don’t have new habitat and still travelaround the islands, besides the report have recorded all the population ofdeer, we can believe that the amount did decline.



More than that, the author related the disabilityof migrating to global warming. The author concluded that the warming trendlead to the melting of the ice. What the author have done is just putting thetwo things together but provide the evidence of the melting. The author has notevaluated the thickness and areas and did not provide the statistics of temperaturechange. We can not believe the relationship between the climate and ice. Besidesthat, even though the warmer climate leads to ice melting, how can we draw theconclusion that the melting has affected the road for deer migration? If the authorcan not offer more detail evidence of the melting condition, the argument cannot be persuasive enough.

And validity of the argument is doubtfulitself. At the beginning of the argument, the author present that the deer isliving in a cold environment but warm enough to sustain their food resource. Wecan also suspect that the temperature probably is becoming to low to maintainthe food for deer. But at last, the argument mentioned the global warming. Itcan be contradicted.

In conclusion, it is imprudent to confirmthe statement solely on the basis of the evidence presented. Because theevidence cited in the analysis is too weak to lend strong support to what thearguer claim. To make the argument more convincing, the arguer should enhancethe credibility by providing the evidence more detail and exclusive for other possibilities.