Saturday, February 9, 2013

24. Marco Rubio: Another Senator Who Doubts Global Warming


http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/02/07/climate_change_marco_rubio_doubts_global_warming.html

In the article Phil Plait wrote on February 7th, he criticizes Marco Rubio for his response towards the global warming issue. Plait introduces by explaining who Marco Rubio, a United States legislator, and says what angered him at first. He even gave a link to a video showing Marco Rubio responding to the question “Do you see global warming as a threat to Florida [Rubio’s home state]?”. Plait supports the first part of Rubio’s response and provides scientific evidence to back him up, but then he explains that such climate changes are extremely rare. When Rubio’s says that he has seen reasonable debate on the issue, Plait contradicts him by saying that these “debates” are carried out by deniers of global warming “are not climate scientists, twist data, leave out critical information, use cherry-picked graphs, and resort to outrageous ad hominems to cast doubt on the reality of global warming.” He ends by displaying his anger against people who deny global warming and says that “we need to stop fiddling while the world burns, and start putting out this fire.”

The author’s purpose in writing this article is to say how Marco Rubio is unreasonable and is wrong with his opinion that global warming is directly caused by human actions. Along with that, he also wants to persuade people who agree with Rubio to realize that global warming is real and the drastic climate changes are results of human actions. Plait uses a lot of evidence to support his views, even the views he shares with Rubio. One would think Plait uses ad hominem, attacking Marco Rubio, but he actually attacks his argument fervently since he completely disagrees with him. The language is informal, using first person and including the reader as well as using contractions. Plait is effective to achieve his purpose since he uses direct language and a lot of evidence to reject Rubio’s argument.

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