Q20 - Unusually large and intense forest

[Nina]

why is D incorrect?

Thanks!

[rinagoldfield]

Hey Nina,

Thanks for your post. This is a tricky one!

Let’s start with what we know:

1. Air pollution causes global warming
2. Many scientists believe that global warming enhanced the El Nino’s unusual strength
3. The unusual strength of the El Nino caused widespread drought
4. The widespread drought made the tropics more susceptible to forest fires.
5. Large and intense forest fires swept the tropics after the El Nino.

Let’s work from top to bottom on the answer choices.

(A) is extreme in degree. LARGELY responsible? Also, "many scientists" believe that global warming enhanced the El Nino’s unusual strength, but that doesn’t make the claim true. Many scientists believed the world was flat back in the Renaissance.

(B) is also extreme in degree. Maybe the El Nino intensified the fires... but we can’t infer that "few if any" fires would have occurred if not for the El Nino. (See my explanation of answer choice [D] for more on the relationship between the El Nino and the forest fires.)

(C) is too broad. Generally? No, we’re talking about one specific instance here.

(D) is VERY tempting. We know that some scientists believe that air pollution, which causes global warming, intensified the El Nino. But what do we actually KNOW about the relationship between the El Nino and the forest fires?

We know that the El Nino made the area more susceptible to forest fires, which amounts to... NOTHING.

Here’s an analogy:

My breakup made me more susceptible to crying.
I cried yesterday.
The breakup was responsible for my crying.

^This overlooks the possibility that I cried yesterday because I fell of my bike, or because I missed my mom, or because I was so moved by a Bat Mitzvah.

In terms of the stimulus: the El Nino may have made the area more susceptible to fire, but a whole different set of factors may actually have been "responsible" for the fires.

So we can’t infer a connection between air pollution and the fires.

(E) is supported. We know for sure that the El Nino caused widespread drought. If we accept the scientists’ belief ("the strength of the El Nino was enhanced by the global warming caused by air pollution") then the air pollution also contributed to the drought.

Does that make sense? Hope it helps.

#officialexplanation

[abematsui]

I missed this question when I sat for June 2013 and when I retook PT 69. I finally got my head around this question, and here is my justification for (E)

We know this El Nino caused wide spread drought. Lets say the force of the unusually strong El Nino is 100 percent. So if air pollution composed the force by even 1%, then we can say it contributed to the unusually strong El Nino, and therefore contributed to the widespread drought.

My fault in E was not realizing how weak the term contributing is. It can mean anywhere from 1%-99%

[LSATeater]

I absolutely resent this question because the choices are tricky and the right answer is at the end after all of the traps.

HOWEVER, behind all the LSAT smoke-and-mirrors is a pretty simple question telling us to make a pretty simple inference.

We are told large and intense fires occurred in the tropics in 1997. After that first sentence, we are given a chain of facts that we can link through conditionals.

Air pollution-->global warming-->stronger El Nino-->drought--->increased susceptibility to fire

I diagrammed this chain backwards as I read the stimulus since it basically gives us the necessary statements. Also, the first two links apply only to the specific scientists who hold that view about global warming and the enhanced El Nino. The rest of the chain is truth for everyone as far as we are concerned.

Choice (E) must be right because that is the 1st, 3rd, and 4th link of the chain. (D) was tempting but as has been posted, it doesn't have to be true.

[cyt5015]

If answer D was changed to "at least some scientists believe that air pollution was responsible for the widespread drought", will that make answer D a correct one? I doubt that. Even if "many scientists believe air pollution enhanced E Nino (scientists believe A enhanced B)", and given the fact that "E Nino caused drought (B causes C)", we still cannot conclude "some scientists believe A causes C". Do those scientists believe in the fact of B causing C? We cannot find any clue of that statement. My point is that we cannot link a belief with a fact in a logic chain.
Can any geek shed some light on my discussion please?

[rinagoldfield]

That’s a really great insight, cyt5015. You’re right that we can’t infer anything about the scientists’ beliefs since we don’t know what they believe (beyond what’s given, of course). In this case, we know that at least some scientists believe that air pollution enhanced the El Nino. We can’t leap to any other inference about their beliefs concerning the drought, the fires, or any other matter. Thanks for pointing this out!

[jrkovals]

I was having similar thoughts as cyt

[hanhansummer]

So, from this case, can I generalize that if A makes B (a subject) susceptible to C (a certain result), A is not responsible for C?