Part 1
A claim is the bases or the side that you take in an argument.
Support is the information that that author gives that persuades the audience to choose the side that he/she is arguing.
Evidence is facts that will help prove that your particular claim is a correct one.
Explanation is the way that the author explains the evidence to support his/ her side of the argument.
Part 2
1. My first response to this article was that I thought that Crichton was quite well versed and made a very convincing argument to his side of thinking. While I was reading the article I felt melancholy because if what he wrote in this article was in fact the truth then I was quite mislead by the media about the state of the environment and if I was mislead then I’m sure that others were as well. After reading this article I know the truth, or at least something closer to it, and I felt sad that others who feel the same way that I did about the environment will not have a chance to read this. What really stuck out to me was the part that Crichton covered all of the lies that have come out about the environment; I couldn’t believe that some of the things that I hear all of the time were untrue.
2. The tone that Crichton uses in the article is sometimes a sarcastic one, like when he talks about parts of religion, but it is mostly a serious and hurried tone. I think that Crichton feels very strongly about this topic and wants to make the reader feel that something needs to be done soon about the problem. The reason that he makes the reader feel this way is to make the problem seem urgent, and hopefully that will make the make more people agree with his side of the argument.
3. The main claim that Crichton makes is that people should not faithfully follow environmentalism, but that science should be more involved in environmentalism. This is not his only claim though, he makes many others.
4. He supports his claim in a few different ways. One of the most effective ways that he uses is by telling all of the stretching of truth and downright lies that environmental groups have made about the environment. He also tells about the different predictions that have been made incorrectly and compares them to the crazy people on the street who predict the time that the earth will end. The evidence that he uses supports his claim well.
5. The reason that Crichton does not cite his sources he says is because there are only a few people who have read the articles that they come from even though they are in highly respected scientific magazines. I do accept that he didn’t cite anything but it does make me skeptical, if he had the sources why he didn’t just cite them (other than the fact that it is a pain in the butt). I think this not citing greatly hurts his argument.
6. I think that the argument is a strong one and that he wrote it in a very convincing way, the only criticism that I have about the article is that there is no proof that anything he says is true, he could just be lying about all of his “facts”.