Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Environment Science in the News – Information Literacy





News Article - Rainforest in Transition: Is the Amazon Transforming before Our Eyes?
This news article was written by David Biello, who is one of the authors publish scientist articles on Scientific American.  The news article was about deforestation due to agricultural activities at the Amazon Basin that may have a link of climate change in that region.  Biello showed us that deforestation at the Amazon Basin might cause reduce rainfall in the region and increases release of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere.
About Scientific Americian
This news article is a somewhat reliable information source because it has a lot of current fact in the Amazon Basin Region, but it had missed some scientific data to support the fact.  The website is run by Scientific American, and they make the information seems reliable.  Scientific American’s mission is to “provide the leading source and authority for science, technology information, and policy for a general audience” (from Scientific American website).  This information is listed on its website. 
The news article claimed that deforestation which caused by human impacts on the region’s weather.  Biello did not provide enough climate data support his claim, but he stated human impacts caused deforestation that I agreed.  For this reason, it is hard to tell did the author used any logical fallacies.  I believe he did not use any logical fallacies.
I was interested about this article because it talks about climate change.  However, the article also confused me because Biello only focus on the cause of the climate changed in the Amazon Basin, and lack of the long-term regional climate data to support his claim.  I hoped that Biello had provided more climatically data to support his claim.

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