Edit my opinion paper please?

Question

Mark Twain once said "everyone complains about the weather, but no one does anything about it." This quote summarizes Al Gore’s apprehension about the world-wide epidemic global warming in the documentary An Inconvenient Truth. In the documentary, Mr. Gore’s comments are not entirely accurate. He makes claims that are partially correct or not correct at all in order to make his documentary more intriguing, so that it generates more revenue.

Firstly, I partially concur with Al Gore’s argument based on his claims that the polar ice caps are melting and that global sea levels could rise 20 feet (6.096m) with the loss of the ice cap in Antarctica. He is correct; however, the number would actually be a rise of 200 feet (61.1m) (Table 11.3, from Meier and Bahr (1996), Warrick et al. (1996), Reeh et al. (1999), Huybrechts et al. (2000)) if all the grounded ice melted off of Antarctica. Mr. Gore’s prediction was 180 feet (55.0m) off, perhaps a miscalculation on his part.

Secondly, I oppose Mr. Gore’s idea of the North Pole ice shelves melting by the summer of 2050. His statistics are incorrect because “even though the satellite measurements have continued for more than twenty years, they are inadequate to distinguish between changes due to long-term trends or interannual/inter-decadal variability” (Johannessen et al., 1999). In addition, “Antarctic sea-ice extent has not decreased since the late 1970s, possibly related to recent indications of little change in Antarctic temperatures over much of the continent in that period.” Therefore, it is futile to determine if this is a long term natural phenomenon, or whether this is really caused by annual changes in carbon monoxide concentration that Al Gore would like us to believe.

Lastly, I disagree that the number of major hurricanes in the United States has almost doubled in the last 30 years. “The United States record of landfall frequency and intensity of hurricanes is very reliable because of the availability of central pressure measurements at landfall.” (Jarrell et al., 1992) “Both of these data sets continue to show considerable inter-decadal variability, but no significant long-term trends (Figure 2.37, from Landsea et al., 1999).” “Furthermore, large variations of hurricane activity on interdecadal timescales have been observed in this century (Gray et al., 1997).” With this knowledge, Mr. Gore should not predict the frequency of hurricanes as hurricanes come at random.

In conclusion, I believe Mr. Gore’s accuracy fell short in this documentary and viewers were not properly informed because his statistics had flaws. Also, Mr. Gore should have spoken about the good resulting from immediate action on our behalf rather than focusing on the consequences throughout the documentary.

Answer 1

Well, whether or not I agree with Al Gore on this topic is irrelevant, what you asked for was a critique of your paper. The 'First' thing you need to correct is, 'First-ly, second-ly and last-ly...' these are not words, but rather products of poor speech in today's American English. Also, I would change the wording of 'I oppose Mr. Gore's...'; rather, state 'Mr. Gore IS wrong or IS right' about whatever point you're discussing. If you are taking a stance on the content of the film, your word choice will [should] demonstrate this without you having to say as such. I would suggest changing 'I disagree with...' in reference to the number of hurricanes since your factual data can prove one way or the other if what Mr. Gore has said is correct, there's no need to disagree since the data isn't a matter of his opinion, but rather empirically shown to be true or untrue. The very last sentence of paragraph three (3) should be changed to, 'Mr. Gore CANNOT predict,' or 'Mr. Gore should not ATTEMPT TO predict.' Other than these minor grammatical changes and adjustments in diction, your work seems fine. Good luck!

Just as an aside, consider Jaceroo's comment: "The winters are colder and summers are warmer..." If the winters are COLDER, how can one speak of global WARMING?

Answer 2

Al Gore is right even if his numbers were wrong.
There is global warming and you can tell it today.
The winters are colder and summers are warmer. Places that are not cold are getting cold air and places that are cold are not as cold as they once were.