Arctic deer live on islands in Canada's arctic regions. They search for food by moving over ice from island to island during the course of the 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 purported decline in deer populations is the result of the deer's being unable to follow their age-old migration patterns across the frozen sea.
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
トピAnswer:
The reporter's claim that decline in deer populations is the result of the deer's being unable to follow their age-old migration patterns across the frozen sea contains several logical flaws, and lends little credibility. Rather than relying solely on groundless reasoning, the reporter needs to consider the following points before making a final conclusion.
First and foremost, the whole reasoning of the report is based upon an assumption that the arctic deer's population will not change much over time. Let us think about a situation where the population of the arctic deer is increasing each year by 1.2 fold. Despite the fact that deer's being unable to follow their age-old migration patterns across the frozen sea and decrease, the increase in population will obviously lead to an total increase of the arctic deer's population in the end. Situations like this would weaken the validity of the reporter's claim, and in order to verify the claim, detailed investigation on this point must be addressed.
Second, although the reporter mentioned that deer's being unable to follow their age-old migration patterns across the frozen made the population of the arctic deer decline, he or she did not touch upon the other types of cause such as environment pollution, predatory animals and so on. The reporter must be aware of the fact that change in age-old migration patterns is just one of the cause. It is true that this change will cause decline in deer's population. However, the cause of other factors are also comparably large. If further investigation of the decline of the arctic deer showed that such other cause are also being counted as much as change in age-old migration patterns, then, the reporter's claim would become more convincing.
