Editorial: The legislature is considering allowing oil drilling in the Cape Simmons Nature Preserve. Supporters claim...

BenMingov on October 7, 2019

Hi Jiayi, thanks for the question!

E is stating that there are other industrial activities occurring at Alphin Bay.

We are trying to strengthen the editorial's argument that by looking at Alphin Bay, we know that oiled drilling in Cape Simmons will damage the environment.

If there are other industrial activities and they do cause environmental damage, as opposed to the drilling, then this doesn't help us use Alphin Bay to prove our point that drilling is bad in Cape Simmons.

Conversely, if the other activities are neutral in effect or are even beneficial, this still doesn't tell us that the oil drilling in Cape Simmons will be problematic. This is because they claim that Cape Simmons will use "modern" methods.

Answer D strengthens the argument because it says, if your "modern" methods are the same as in Alphin Bay, then oil drilling will be problematic.

Hope this helps!

Anna20 on July 21, 2020

Why is answer B incorrect? Many thanks!

shunhe on July 28, 2020

Hi @Anna2020,

Thanks for the question! So let’s look at a recap of the stimulus real quick.We’re told that the legislature’s thinking about allowing oil drilling in some preserve. Supporters claim that there won’t be new damage to the environment because modern drilling methods are going to be used. But the author disagrees, thinking that the claim is easily disproven (this is the conclusion). And this is because we can look at Alphin Bay, another place with oil drilling that started five years ago, and that has had environmental damage.

So now we’re trying to strengthen this argument. Let’s take a look at (B), which tells us that the companies drilling for oil at Alphin Bay never claimed that drilling there wouldn’t cause any environmental damage. Well, would this strengthen the argument that we shouldn’t allow oil drilling now? It actually sort of weakens the argument because it distinguishes the two cases, Alphin Bay and Cape Simmons. People might say, “Oh, well sure Alphin Bay is bad, but there, there wasn’t a promise to cause no environmental damage, and here, there is.” But the author is trying to show that what happened in Alphin Bay would happen again; this is an argument by analogy, so the two cases need to be similar. (B) points out a dissimilarity, and thus weakens the argument and isn’t the right answer.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.