The following appeared in the editorial section of a local newspaper:
WHEN the worst drought in 60 years hit America’s corn belt this summer, many people wondered if it was caused by climate change. It is too early to say much about such a recent episode but various studies have attributed earlier individual heatwaves or drought to global warming.
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
The author of the local newspaper attempts to draw a relation between the occurance of this year’s drought, considered the worst ever in 60 years, that hit America’s corn belt in summer and the drastic changes taking place in the earth’s climate. He bases his argument on previous studies which had attributed such droughts to the widespread problem of Global Warming. This however, is a flawed argument based on many incomplete assumptions. Through this essay, the various flawed assumptions are highlighted and how these have a huge impact on the conclusion drawn by the author.
The primary, and the most flawed assumption that the author rests his argument on is by referring to the various earlier studies which have cited global warming as the main cause for the occurance of these natural disasters. This is fundamentally wrong as there is no strong statistical evidence provided by the author to support his claim. He also does not state any details about where the studies were held, who participated in this study and how many people contributed to it. The argument would have been more compelling if strong supporting evidence was provided about the studies such as the sample space, the size of the participating group, the year when it was conducted etc.
Another major flaw is in the author’s approach of drawing a comparison between two scenarios which are probably spaced many years apart on the timeline. This highlights the mistake that the author commits by comparing the earth’s present day condition to the condition that was prevalent many years ago when the respective studies were carried out. The earth has a dynamically changing environment and its situation changes from year to year, or even from day to day.
Lastly, besides climatic changes, changes in the country’s economy or the government’s policy can also have long reaching consequences resulting in such disasters. For example, it could be possible that the country’s government would have built a weak dam for holding the river water, which ultimately collapsed, thus inundating the surrounding villages.
In a nutshell, the argument presented by the author is based on incomplete and flawed assumptions. These assumptions should be further reviewed in depth by taking a holistic approach into the nature of the cited studies, other non-climatic factors at that point of time, the changing landscape of the earth’s natural climate over the years etc. before arriving on any concrete conclusion.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 15 15
No. of Words: 402 350
No. of Characters: 2046 1500
No. of Different Words: 216 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.478 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.09 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.693 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 152 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 125 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 81 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 52 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.8 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.509 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.333 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.339 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.594 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.096 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, besides, but, however, if, lastly, so, thus, for example, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 16.0 19.6327345309 81% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 5.0 12.9520958084 39% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 24.0 28.8173652695 83% => OK
Preposition: 52.0 55.5748502994 94% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2149.0 2260.96107784 95% => OK
No of words: 402.0 441.139720559 91% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.34577114428 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.47771567384 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.96110609456 2.78398813304 106% => OK
Unique words: 220.0 204.123752495 108% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.547263681592 0.468620217663 117% => OK
syllable_count: 647.1 705.55239521 92% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 16.0 19.7664670659 81% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 60.5593716942 57.8364921388 105% => OK
Chars per sentence: 134.3125 119.503703932 112% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.125 23.324526521 108% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.4375 5.70786347227 78% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.212568829832 0.218282227539 97% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0648296704467 0.0743258471296 87% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0631307226635 0.0701772020484 90% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.112823006924 0.128457276422 88% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0589435273604 0.0628817314937 94% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.3 14.3799401198 113% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 46.1 48.3550499002 95% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.0 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.05 12.5979740519 112% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.96 8.32208582834 108% => OK
difficult_words: 104.0 98.500998004 106% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.