Logical ReasoningDifficulty: Medium

PT7 S4 Q8 Explanation

George: Some scientists say that

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TopicsEvaluate

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Full official LSAT questions are available through LawHub. This page provides LSAT Lab's explanation, strategy, and review tools without republishing the full official question.

Stimulus

George: Some scientists say that global warming will occur because people are releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning trees and fossil fuels. We can see, though, that the predicted warming is occurring already. In the middle of last winter, we had a month of springlike weather in leaves on our town’s trees were three weeks late in turning color.

What this question is testing

Evaluate

Conclusion

George says global warming is happening already.

Evidence

His evidence: in his area, last winter had a warm month, and leaves turned late this fall.

Evaluate

The slip is local-to-global. Weather in one place is not the same as climate across the planet. A warm winter in George's town could be a fluke, or normal regional variation, or part of a worldwide trend — we cannot tell from his data alone.

Imagine someone says, Maybe that is part of a global trend, maybe not. To evaluate, we would want to know whether birthrates are rising in many other places, not just among that person's circle.

Same here. The thing that would make George's local data informative about global warming is whether the pattern of unusually warm weather is showing up more frequently across the rest of the world.

Goal

Find the question whose answer separates "George's area is unusual" from "this is happening globally."

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
8.

Which one of the following would it be most relevant to investigate in evaluating the conclusion

Answer choices

  1. No Impact7% picked this

    whether carbon dioxide is the only cause of

    Whether carbon dioxide is the only cause of global warming addresses what causes warming — not whether warming is happening. George's conclusion is about whether warming is already occurring; the cause is taken as background. Either way the answer comes out, it does not tell us whether George's local data is representative of a global pattern.

  2. Weaker Impact6% picked this

    when leaves on the trees in the town usually

    This addresses one specific data point — when the leaves usually change. It might confirm or undermine that part of George's evidence locally, but even establishing that this fall really was unusual in his area does not bridge the local-to-global gap. The bigger problem is that George is treating local data as evidence of a global trend; this question stays inside the local data.

  3. No Impact6% picked this

    what proportion of global emissions of carbon dioxide is due to the burning of

    The proportion of CO2 emissions due to burning trees is about causes of CO2, not about whether warming is happening or whether it is global. George's conclusion is about the existence of warming, and this question does not bear on that.

  4. No Impact5% picked this

    whether air pollution is causing some trees in the area to

    Air pollution causing tree leaf-loss is an alternative explanation for the leaf observation, but it does not address the central problem — that George is generalizing from local weather to global warming. Even if pollution explains the leaves, the warm winter is also part of George's evidence, and the local-to-global problem applies to both.

  5. Correct76% picked this

    whether unusually warm weather is occurring elsewhere on the globe more

    Why this is right

    This is the right question to ask. George is concluding global warming is occurring based on local weather. The way to evaluate that move is to find out whether unusually warm weather is happening more frequently elsewhere too. If yes, George's observation fits a worldwide pattern and the conclusion is supported. If no, his observation is just a local fluctuation and the conclusion fails. Either answer significantly affects the evaluation — exactly what an Evaluate question requires.

    Skill tested: Evaluate · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

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