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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: 477          TIME: 0:45:00          DATE: 2006-8-16

This argument is not cogent because it assumes that citied correlation implies causation, which is not necessarily the case. The arguer asserts that because of recent global warming, ice melt, and then arctic deer cannot reach warm areas to get food, finally the number of them declined. But the conclusion of decline lack of convincing evidence, the given reasons of deer decline are not persuasive ether.

Fist, the reports of the deer populations from local hunters are not believable. Because hunters are not professional in surveying, there are not any details and clear numbers of the deer population. They may make such conclusion just through their casual daily observation, which is of occasion and without scientific methods. And they might be not objective enough, for they are hunters, who are living on hunting. Any little changes of deer may be thought serious, since it is close to their economic income. Normal wave in population might be considered into important decline. Thus we cannot conclude arctic deer population has already decreased only through reports from local hunters.

Secondly, there is not necessary relationship between recent global warming and the ice in this area will melt. As we all know, global warming cover through the whole earth, but it does not mean every area of the world will be influenced. Some areas might be suffered a lot while some areas might be influenced just a little, such as 0.01 centigrade higher. And from the given statement, no information about how much the temperature there rises does not supply. If the change of temperature is not high enough, little ice will melt. Additionally, the melting of ice does not only relate to temperature there, several other factors maybe influence it, such as the volume of ice, the thickness of the ice. Thus we cannot claim that global warming result in ice melting.

Finally, even if we accept that recent global warming makes ice melting, there is little evidence to substantiate that the decline of arctic deer populations attribute to it. In one hand, as it introduced, if some of the year the ice can cover the sea to allow deer to travel over, they can feed themselves. So it is not necessary to keep the ice frozen in a whole year. Periodical melting might not harm them at all.  In the other hand, numerous aspects can be viewed as the reason of decline, such as disease, over hunting, and so on. If serious disease spread among the arctic deer, the number of them will decrease immediately, since it is difficult for animals to fight against disease. And when hunters kill them so much, obviously, populations decline. In a word, deer may disappear from many reasons, ice melting may be only one of them

To, sum up, if the arguer wants to make a more logically acceptable argument, more evidence should be given. And more rational analysis is also inevitable.