045The 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."作者: yesrush 时间: 2009-8-12 22:58:39
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: 488
TIME: 00:29:00
DATE: 2009-8-12 19:28:54
By citing the report from local hunters, that the number of deer is decreasing, and the recent global warming which leads to the melting of sea ice, the author concludes that the decline in arctic deer population is the product of that they can not follow their age-old migration patterns across the frozen sea. The argument seems to sound on the surface, however, the author neglects other factors to evaluate the situation.
To begin with, the report from local hunters, that the population of deer is going down, is doubted. Does most of the deer has moved to another location while only few of them remains in the area? Does the local hunters overlooks other deer in Canada's arctic region since this region is too large to find every deer easily. In the face of such limited evidence, I can not agree that the number of deer is decreasing.
In addition, even if the population of deer in this region tends to decrease, the author unjustly assumes that the population decline is attributable to the lack of food and global warming. Although high temperature induces to the melt of sea ice, as well as deer have to travel over the sea ice to another regions to search plants, these two factors may not explain the decline number of deer. The level of growing temperature in the area is not informed, meanwhile we do not know the proportion of melting sea ice. The author overlooks the possibility that the temperature only slightly increases in this area so that most of the sea ice remains no melting, thus the deer still are able to travel over the sea ice to find food. The author also neglects the possibility that the temperature rises so much that not only all sea ice turns into water, but also the glant, such food upon which the deer' living depend, grows well in the warm environment, which means that deer can enjoy food without traveling to other regions.
What's more, the author also overlooks other factors play major roles in the decline deer population. Perhaps the local hunters hunt too much deer, especially the juvenile deer, which bring impediment to deer population's natural growing. The deer are likely to die due to poisoned water, since a industrial factory, which output waste into water, just open up near this region. Without rolling up these factors, it is fallacious for the author to believe that the reason of the decline of deer population lies in food matters.
To sum up, the argument suffers from several fallacious. To make the argument more convincing, the author should provide the proportion of melting sea ice in all sea ice. To better access to the argument, the author must represent environmental information in arctic region. If the information given up is provides, I can accept the conclusion that global warming and limited food is the key reason of the decline of deer population.