Q4 - Ecologist: landfills are generally designed

[irini101]

I narrow down to D but it does not seem perfect:
D: I have doubt about "the argument as a whole", as the first sentence is background information, and second sentence is the claim in question, so the only part casting doubt on the claim is the last sentence(the conclusion), therefore I don't see how come the argument as a whole casting doubt on the claim?

Could any one help and pinpont error in the thought above?

Thanks a lot!

[noah]

This argument has an implied conclusion that the argument that there will be a landfill crisis is problematic. Why? Because it rests on an unlikely assumption that there will be no more landfills opening.

The rest of the argument is context, or the support for the argument that is being challenged.

We're asked to identify the role of the argument that is being challenged, so (D) works well. When the answer says "argument as a whole" it means the argument overall. It doesn't mean "each and every part of it."

(A) is incorrect - the claim doesn't flow straight out of the first sentence as you actually need the first and second sentence (you need to know the number of landfills may dwindle).

(B) is missing the point - it's the conclusion that's being debunked!

(C) is reversed, like (B).

(E) is tempting since it's fancy, but there's no conclusion that's based on that conclusion.

[chike_eze]

This question reads like this:

Generally, Y
Based on Y, some people claim X
However, X relies on unlikely assumption...
Therefore X is not true.

Everything after claim X is meant to disprove claim X. The conclusion is that X is not true, why? unlikely assumption. So from this exercise we know two things about "some people claim X"
(1) It is not the main conclusion
(2) It does not support the conclusion

Armed with this information, we can get to the correct answer (D) by eliminating the 4 wrong choices.

(B) and (C) not conclusion, not support - eliminate
(E) We know it does not support the conclusion - eliminate
(A) this may be true, but we are looking for its role - eliminate