Global warming does not exist! ha!

The endless concerns about the environment of today’s society occupy our minds every day. Lots of people worry about the pollution that is caused by our everyday conveniences; global warming remains as one of the choice topics of the environmentalists and the ordinary folk. Many are convinced that greenhouse gases pollute the environment and increase the temperature on the Earth today, however John F. McManus thinks the contrary. In his article “Global Warming is Not a Serious Problem”, McManus is trying to persuade all Americans to realize humans are not the cause of the global warming and the fact that it is beneficial to the environment by using rhetorical fallacies, such as “poisoning the well” and “bandwagon appeal.”

In the introduction of his article, McManus already starts to powerfully use his rhetoric: “Those who insist that human beings…are [increasing global warming,] ignore the many scientific refutations to their claims. What they seek is control of fellow man: how he lives, how he works… In their drive for power, they are regularly aided by elements of the Establishment media…” Of course he is talking about politicians; they are the most outspoken people on this issue. One has to think hard to name a famous environmental scientist who has publicly announced his views; however, when it comes to politicians, Al Gore comes to most people’s minds. McManus is using “poisoning the well” fallacy in the opening of his article and before including any examples of his own in order to introduce to the reader the distrust one should have towards officials, who think they “know” what they are talking about. This tactic really plays a good psychological role on the reader – what one thought to be true and correct has political and personal power gain reasons behind it. McManus lowers the reputation of politicians and implies that they are like unto actors, who say what they want to say and “ignore the many scientific refutations to their claims.” We must keep in mind that McManus has not mentioned anything about his own views of global warming; this paragraph was intended to “warm up” the reader for the material later to be discussed.

After discussing one example of so called “political knowledge”, McManus gets back at the reader with a question: “If leading politicians and the nation’s leading newspaper agree that global warming is a serious problem, who dares to disagree?” Is this a rhetorical question? No, although an average person does not know the answer to the question, McManus provides us with one, later to be mentioned*. However, the reader, most probably, would stop after that question and just think for a minute. The author uses another fallacy to persuade the reader’s mind – “bandwagon appeal.” Everyone trusts the information written in New York Times or speeches given by government representatives – it has been proved right and contains no bias, or does it? Well, if a few dozen million people read the New York Times every morning, it must be right. If so many people watch the television broadcast of Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth”, the information contained in them must be correct. However, McManus addresses this question and raises nothing but doubt about all they learned about global warming in the reader’s mind. The author’s purpose of using this fallacy is to actually help the reader identify it, that is making the reader realize that they do follow the crowd, what is popular is not necessarily correct. McManus has finished the initial attack on the sources of well-known public information and is moving onto his argument.

*-- since this is a 3 paragraph assignment, it is not going to be mentioned here in particular

Issues Thesis:

The use of electricity-powered vehicles will improve the environment and leave the crude oil to other essential uses.