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.
The author of this statement argues that since there has global warming concerns affecting migration patterns, it is a cause for the decline in the Arctic deer population in Canada. Just because two phenomena cooccur, it does not mean that one caused the other. This means that evidence is required to evaluate this claim.
First, it is important to see if many of the Arctic deer decided to migrate to another area. The Arctic deer may realize that they have another route across the water to get to their food supply and may have settled there since there may also be a more steady supply of food there. If this proves true, the author’s statement is strengthened since the migration pattern is changed by not including a body of water being crossed. Also, though global warming is affecting the amount of ice that forms in general, is it enough to prevent the deer from crossing island to island? If global warming is not having an appreciable effect on ice formation, then the author’s statement is weakened since the migration patter would not be altered.
In addition, more information about the Artic deers’ diet should be known in order to accept the author’s argument. It may be the case that the deer may have run out of food since there was more competition for food during a malthuasian event that occurred when the deer population was too high and the food supply was too low. Thus, since the food availability was too low for the deer, they would not have been able to feed themselves and would die as a result of starvation. If this were discovered to be true, the author’s claim that global warming coinciding with the decrease in population. On the other hand, the Arctic deers may have run out of food on most islands because their plants that they rely on were really sensitive to climate change to the point of death. Since global warming has altered the migration patterns due to no food left to migrate to, the author would be correct in his or her assertion that climate change has cause a decline in the deer population.
Lastly, the author’s source of deer population changes were from hunting reports, there is a lot of suspect in his claims. It makes sense for hunters to monitor populations of the animals preyed upon otherwise those animals will go extinct. It is possible that human settlements have caused the decrease in the deer population since humans are omnivores that would eat deer meat. It is possible that their relentless hunting has caused the decreased population and not climate change. Furthermore, human settlements may also be getting larger, chasing the deers out since humans need more room or chase the deer out themselves in order to prevent the deer from damaging their crops. If this were true, then the author’s statement will be weaker since global warming has not affected the migration patterns of the deer.
All in all, the author’s argument which is “X” happened at the same time “Y” occurred, therefore X caused Y requires a lot of information to corroborate it. His or her claims may be true, however given the lack information that is presented, this claim cannot be taken to be true right away.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 550 350
No. of Characters: 2555 1500
No. of Different Words: 231 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.843 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.645 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.407 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 172 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 121 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 77 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 48 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.746 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.682 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.326 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.517 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.089 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 748, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... migration patter would not be altered. In addition, more information about the ...
^^^^^
Line 7, column 386, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...are omnivores that would eat deer meat. It is possible that their relentless hunti...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, furthermore, however, if, lastly, may, really, so, then, therefore, thus, as to, in addition, in general, as a result, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 36.0 19.6327345309 183% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 16.0 13.6137724551 118% => OK
Pronoun: 45.0 28.8173652695 156% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 72.0 55.5748502994 130% => OK
Nominalization: 27.0 16.3942115768 165% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2680.0 2260.96107784 119% => OK
No of words: 550.0 441.139720559 125% => OK
Chars per words: 4.87272727273 5.12650576532 95% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.84273464058 4.56307096286 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.65485925916 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 243.0 204.123752495 119% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.441818181818 0.468620217663 94% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 825.3 705.55239521 117% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 11.0 4.96107784431 222% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 39.8986318869 57.8364921388 69% => OK
Chars per sentence: 121.818181818 119.503703932 102% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.0 23.324526521 107% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.77272727273 5.70786347227 119% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.180125664611 0.218282227539 83% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0620177099914 0.0743258471296 83% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0663734106323 0.0701772020484 95% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.105238770311 0.128457276422 82% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0684054972194 0.0628817314937 109% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.0 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 54.56 48.3550499002 113% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.26 12.5979740519 89% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.72 8.32208582834 93% => OK
difficult_words: 99.0 98.500998004 101% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => 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.