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The article “The Detective of Northern Oddities” by Christopher Solomon was published on the fourth of January, 2017 in the Outside magazine. The author brings up the discussion of the effects of climate change on the wildlife. He is trying to show that the environment needs to be changed or the wildlife will be affected and we will have nothing left.
The author’s target audience is adults who are interested in the outdoors, hence the name of the magazine. The article is focused on the wildlife that should concern the audience, and the author is trying to get them to notice the effects that are happening to animals. For example, “Working on wild animals, often in situ, routinely presents her with job hazards that simply aren’t found in the lower 48. Anchorage sits at the confluence of two long inlets. When Burek performs necropsies on whales on Turnagain Arm, she has to keep a sentry’s eye on the horizon for its infamous bore tide, when tidal flow comes in as a standing wave, fast enough that it has outrun a galloping moose” (Solomon, para. 35). This shows that the scientists in the article also enjoy the outdoors, and that can create a connection between the reader and the article.
The purpose of the article is to show how the environment has been affected by humans. For example, “As human-generated greenhouse gases continue to trap heat in the world’s oceans, air, and ice at the rate of four Hiroshima bomb explosions every second, and carbon dioxide reaches its greatest atmospheric concentration in 800,000 years, the highest latitudes are warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe… With these shifts in climate and vegetation, birds, rodents, and other animals are on the march. Parasites and pathogens are hitching rides with these newcomers” (Solomon, para. 16). The author is attempting to show that humans are causing those affects to go faster. The author makes a point that viruses and pathogens are traveling in the water and affecting the animals that have never been exposed to these viruses before.
The article is organized in a certain way to captivate the audience into reading the article. In the beginning of the article, the author introduces the sea otter like it is a beautiful creature by describing its body. “she weighed 58 pounds and was the size of a collie. The growth rings in a tooth they pulled revealed her age—eight years, a mature female sea otter. They anesthetized her and placed tags on her flippers. They assigned her a number: LCI013, or 13 for short. They installed a transmitter in her belly and gave her a VHF radio frequency: 165.155 megahertz” (Solomon, para. 1). After he gives the background information on the sea otter, he just bluntly states that the sea otter is dead and the scientists take it away for autopsy. The author then concluded his introduction with a statement that the scientists made, ““They’re one of the few animals that are cute even when they’re dead” (Solomon, para. 4). He did this to show the shock of such a beautiful creature, even in death. Unfortunately, the scientist see this kind of sadness every day.
The author concludes the paper in the same way by using the same type of shock he used with the otters in the opening paragraph. The moose was put in the article to show that the disease is also affecting the land animals in the area. The scientists then make a sad statement about having animal parts in their fridges, and they conclude by pretending nothing happened and they go home for the night.
One of the claims that the author makes in the article is that global warming is causing viruses to spread through animals due to their homes melting away. As stated by the author, “Some species are finding that their traditional homes are disappearing, even while the north becomes more hospitable to new arrivals… With these shifts in climate and vegetation, birds, rodents, and other animals are on the march. Parasites and pathogens are hitching rides with these newcomers” (Solomon, para. 17). The organization of this evidence is done to show that the people are the reason that animals are losing their homes. It is effective if the author is trying to show us that we need to change. It is also great evidence that shows that animals are dying in the areas that we tend to neglect.
Global warming is also causing the atmosphere to warm up as the author states, ““The north isn’t just warming. It has a fever… what happens in the north won’t stay there. Birds migrate. Disease spreads” (Solomon, para. 22). Animals are also relocating due to the weather getting to warm in their natural habitat. The animals move to the colder regions and they carry viruses with them. The author’s evidence is great but he used this example already. All he did was elaborate the evidence further for the audience to understand a great deal about why global warming is the main reason disease is spreading.
The author also states that viruses are interacting with each other and cause new viruses to be created out of it. “Many of the otters that died of strep also had low levels of toxins from the Blob’s massive algal bloom, a clue that the animals possibly had even more of the quick-moving poison in their systems before researchers got to them. They must be somehow interacting” (Solomon, para. 9). This shows that viruses that have been forgotten are coming back because they interacting with another disease. The author states that the sea otters died from getting strep and that caused mold to go into their body. The mold was poisoning them but they could not do anything about it, and animals that eat them will get the mold in them as well. This will cause everything to spread. The author used good organization when using this as his evidence by providing what the scientists said during the autopsy.
The author is just trying to make us see that the animals are dying at an alarming rate, and we need to do something about it. The author provides great evidence that supports his claim. The author also organizes his paper in a way that his audience can understand him.
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