The following comparison will be based on the cartoon essay Science Tales: Lies, Hoaxes, and Scams written by Darryl Cunningham in 2012, as well as “Dire Predictions about Climate Change”, written in form of letters to the editor of The New York Times, 15.05.2012. The two texts share the common theme of climate change.
The obvious similarity between the two texts is the focus on climate change and where it comes from, as well as attempting to make the reader think a certain way. They want to persuade the reader to believe their particular point of view with reference to the controversy over global warming.
The main difference between the two texts is the medium used to display and explore the ideas. Text A is an entertaining cartoon displaying
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This expands the possible purposes of the text. However, it is thought the title of Cunningham’s book, from which the cartoon essay is taken, Science Tales: Lies, Hoaxes, and Scams, is more relevant in creating a purpose as it already makes a certain opinion clear. He refers to scientific theories as tales, which, by definition, are “narratives that relate the details of some real or imaginary event, incident, or case; story” (Dictionary.com). He then continues his title with ‘Lies, Hoaxes and Scams’, which refer to falsehoods and untruths. By publishing a story about climate change in this book of falsehoods and untrue science theories, he already makes it clear that he does not agree with this theory and believes it is wrong. His last caption “All this has taken place even though the 2000s have experienced a solar output decline” sounds somewhat cynical. All through the cartoon he has given facts and figures that may or may not give evidence for climate change, but he diminishes them by ending saying, that people say that what is happening is climate change and global warming exists, but that’s not possible seeing as we’ve had a solar output decline. Cunningham makes this fact seem like it outweighs all the others presented before and makes his viewpoint on the matter very clear by finishing with this