ARGUMENT137 JET小组

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题目：ARGUMENT137 - The following appeared in an editorial in the Mason City newspaper.

"At present, Mason City residents seldom use the nearby Mason River for any kind of recreational activity, even though surveys of the region's residents consistently rank water sports (swimming, fishing, and boating) as a favorite form of recreation. Since there have been complaints about the quality of the water in the river, residents must be avoiding the river because they think that it is not clean enough. But that situation is about to change: the agency responsible for rivers in our region has announced plans to clean up Mason River. Therefore, recreational use of the river is likely to increase, so the Mason City council will need to increase its budget for improvements to the publicly owned lands along the Mason River."
字数：503          用时：00:29:30          日期：2008-2-23 19:34:19

In this editorial, the author claims that because of the increase of recreational use of Mason River, the Mason City council should increase its budget for improvements to the publicly owned lands along the Mason River. To substantiate this claim, the author points out that the quality of the Mason River would be improved by announced plans and cited a survey that region's residents consistently rank water sports as a favorite form of recreation. However, after a close scrutiny, there are few evidences showing credible to this argument.

First of all, the threshold problem with the augment is that the author claims that the quality of the river will be improved. Though the agency responsible for rivers has announced plans to clean up Mason River, it is high doubtful that the quality of the river could be improved. There is no any information and statistics about the plans. Perhaps there are some flaws in this plan so that the plans can not sufficiently improve the quality of the Mason River. Furthermore, it is impossible for us to know the efficiency of the employee of the agency. Lacking enough information and statistics about the agency, the author can not expect us to take seriously that the agency can improve the quality of the Mason River.

Furthermore, even assuming the agency can improve the quality of the Mason River, the author can not reasons that the recreational use of the river is likely to increase. It is true that the author sited surveys about the favorite form of recreation of the Mason City's residents, while there is proved evidence that the surveys are reliable in all respects. There is no information and statistics about the number of respondent of the surveys. In addition, there is no evidence that if the quality of Mason City has been improved, residents of Mason City would choose the Mason River as their recreational places. Without in details analyzing these and other factors, the author can not draw a conclusion that the recreation use of the river would increase.

Finally, even if the recreation of the river would increase, the author hastily recommends that Mason City should improve the publicly owned lands along the Mason River. There is no relationship that the recreation of the Mason River is responsible to the improvement the publicly owned lands. There is no evidence that the publicly owned land should be improved. It is highly possible that the condition of the publicly owned lands along the Mason River is still better than any before. Lacing evidence that the publicly owned lands along the Mason River facing some bad situation, the author's recommend is illogical.

In sum, the author can not convince me that Mason City council need to increase budget for improvements to the publicly owned lands. To better support his argument, it is necessary for him to provide more affirmative evidence that the quality would be improved in the future. What is more, I need the clear information about the surveys and evidence to rule out abovementioned possibilities which would undermine this argument