PT139 · S4 · Q20 Unusually large and intense

Opinion vs. Fact Too Strong = largely responsible I hate this answer, and in many universes in the multiverse I'm probably picking it. It rewards us for having assembled the grand causal chain of Air Poll. → Glob Warm → Big Niño → Drought → Fire risk ↑ However, we're only told that "many scientists believe" that air pollution led to global warming which led to the weirdly big El Niño. This answer treats that as a fact and also amps up the burden of proof by saying that air pollution was largely responsible, when the safe inference would be somewhat responsible.

On Most Supported tasks, we are allowed to flip a Causal Difference-Maker and say "If it hadn't happened, we wouldn't have seen (as much) of the Effect". (This is a Must Be True task, though) We know that a weirdly strong El Niño led to a big draught, which made forests more susceptible to fire. So, on Most Supported, we can say "if there hadn't been a weirdly strong El Niño, the forests would have been less susceptible to fire." But this goes too far in predicting "few, if any" large fires. We just know less susceptible, not barely susceptible at all.

Although we have some support for the idea that strong El Niño's lead to more drought and thus susceptibility to fire, we can't derive a Must Be True inference that in 51% or more of strong El Niño ears there have been larger and more intense tropical forest fires. The causal information is presented as "susceptible to fire at that time because of drought and El Niño".

Out of Scope: scientists beliefs about fires There's a recurring flaw LSAT sometimes goes back to in which we assume that someone believes an implication of one of their beliefs. For example: 2 is a prime number. Tania believes that her brother Ricky's age is 2, so Tania believes that her brother Ricky's age is a prime number. That's flawed since Tania might not even know what a prime number is. We have no way of inferring her other beliefs. We can't assume that she knows all relevant information or is capable of or inclined to make rational connections between her beliefs. (Like even if I know that alcohol is bad for my body and know that scotch is alcohol, I might not believe that scotch is bad for my body.) Similarly, these scientists who believe that El Niño was exacerbated by global warming that was caused by pollution don't necessarily know that El Niño spurned a big drought which amped up the risk of fires. So this answer is congratulating us for having seen the big causal chain, but they're using it against us. What some/many scientists believe only goes the first couple links in the chain. Air Pollution → Global Warm → Big Niño → Drought → Fire risk ↑ [ many scientists believe ]