ARGUMENT45

柯尊龙UID: 2853190

TOPIC: ARGUMENT45 - The following appeared as an editorial in a wildlife journal.

"Arctic deer live on islands in Canada's arctic region. They search for food by moving over ice from island to island during the course of a year. Their habitat is limited to areas warm enough to sustain the plants on which they feed, and cold enough, at least some of the year, for the ice to cover the sea separating the islands, allowing the deer to travel over it. Unfortunately, according to reports from local hunters, the deer populations are declining. Since these reports coincide with recent global warming trends that have caused the sea ice to melt, we can conclude that the decline in arctic deer populations is the result of deer being unable to follow their age-old migration patterns across the frozen sea."
WORDS: 479
TIME: 00:30:00
DATE: 2010-8-27 11:13:34

In this editorial, the author concludes that decline in arctic deer populations is result from global warming's effect on destroying the migration pattern. The arguer cites the reports from hunters to indicated deer populations are decreasing which is coincidence with the trend of global warm. And that
the warming climates may effect the migration pattern. However, this editorial rests on a series of unsubstantiated assumption, and is therefore unpersuasive as it stands.

A threshold assumption is that the arctic deer population is actually declining during to the report of the hunter. Yet, the author give us no credible evidence to suggest that those reports is convincing. Common sense informs us hunters cannot justifiably count the total number of the deer, since deer may tend to avoid hunters, and that deer may be migrated to other areas which cannot be accessed by the hunters in order to survive. Without ruling out such possibilities, the hunter's report is unconvincing as it stands, thus, we cannot substantiate draw the conclusion that total number of the deer is declining.

Even if the deer number is decreasing, the author unjustifiably established the causal relationship between global warming and the declining rates. The mere fact that decreasing of deer number coordinates the warming trend do not necessarily support cause and effect relation. There may be other factors which the author fails to consider like the hunters in the arctic has been overhunting for a period of time which cause the deer number to decrease. And other factors that lacking food or serious pollution may also cause such result. Without consideration of such likeability, the causal relationship cannot be established.

Yet, even assuming the trend of global warming is the cause of the deer decreasing, the author further claims that the global warming damaged the migration patterns which lead to the decrease in number. In this editorial the author does not provide us with any information concerning the mechanism of global warm may be detrimental to the migration patterns. It is likely that global warming do not affect the areas which the deer lives or migrates, thus the migration patterns and living habitat may not be destroyed, and that global warming may cause other factor that may influence that surviving of the dear like the food declined, and so on. Without clear description of the effect the global warming may have on the migration pattern, and migration pattern is the cause of population decrease the conclusion cannot be justifiably drawn.


In conclusion, the editorial's claim that the influence on migration patterns lead to the arctic deer population decrease is unwarranted. To bolster its claim, the arguer should provide more statistics of the population of the deer and more evidence of the cause and effect relationship of the global warming the damage of migration pattern, and the relationship of the migration pattern and the decrease of deer population.