▶ Your Answer :
In the reading passage, there is ample support for the author's claim that The little ice age has several possible causes. However, the professor in the lecture gives several reasons as a rebuttal to the author's point. First, the professor contends that the Gulf stream was not a factor of The little ice age. The Gulf stream affected only Europe and America, not southern hemisphere countries such as New Zealand. Therefore, the Gulf stream cannot explain why The little ice age happened all over the globe. This casts doubt on the reading passage's claim that cooling was triggered by disrupting of ocean currents due to warm weather prior to The little ice age. Next, the professor insists that volcano eruption did not contribute to The little ice age. It is a fact that volcano activity occurred at that time. However, if the amount of dark cloud was massive enough, people at that time would have noticed it. Nevertheless, there is no report about this phenomenon like turning the color of the snow from white to gray or brown. This counters the reading passage's assertion that cooling was responsible for the volcanic eruption because of the dark clouds of dust and sulfur gas into the atmosphere, blocking sunlight. Finally, the professor argues that there was not enough time to be cooled because of the human population. After The little ice age period, the population of the human grew back to the regular level, they would have cut the trees again. Since the time of recovery of the population was short, it cannot be the reason for this cooling. This refutes the reading passage's suggestion that decreasing in the human population would have made the forest grow faster, the greenhouse effect would have lowered by the tree's absorbance of carbon dioxides. |