The Darkening Sea Rhetorical Analysis

Nancy Lord’s Early Warming and Elizabeth Kolbert’s “The Darkening Sea” both discuss how global warming is affecting the world. Lord and Kolbert talk about the negative result of climate change and try to raise awareness to global warming. Both Lord’s Early Warming and Kolbert’s “The Darkening Sea” use many different kinds of rhetorical strategies throughout their text. In Lord’s Early Warming, Lords relates to the community about climate change and tells stories about how global warming has affected many people around us. In Kolbert’s “The Darkening Sea”, Kolbert explains how scientist view global warming and uses scientific evidence to show the effect of global warming. Furthermore, Lord is more successful than Kolbert at what Herndl, Rockenbach,

Throughout Lord’s Early Warming, Lord engages the audience by using emotional situations to attract her audience. One example of pathos that was used is when the native elders were talking and how one the native elder explained that “’We rely on the sea for subsistence,’ someone said. ‘All the sea. We need to take care of it’” (186). This quote from Lord states how the elder people in Alaska are trying to save the sea because the sea is where many people get their resources from. The elders in this part of the text clearly make an emotional appeal to save the sea. When the elders state how we need to save the sea and how people rely on the sea, this changes mood of story. It makes this part of the text makes the reader feel sad for the elders and makes the text seem as if this were a cry for help. This is an example ethos shown in Early Warming. Furthermore, another example can be shown in the very beginning of Lord’s Early Warming when Lord states “The north is where we’ll find out just how creative and responsible humans can be. Maybe, we’ll show how to turn a crisis into stronger communities and a more sustainable future. Or maybe the lessons will be quite different; maybe what we’ll learn is how hard it is to lose homes and livelihoods, the costs of ignoring risk and peril, what it means to suffer” (9). Lord texts shows how there can be positive outcome to global

Both authors from “The Darkening Sea” and Early Warming show credibility when they use their sources. For example, in “Early Warming” Lords states “Deborah Williams, a former Department of the Interior official and passionate conservationist, has been called ‘Alaska’s Al Gore’” (3). Since Deborah Williams is a high official, her words about global warming are strong and influential to the reader. Lord uses her sources to help prove her point and then cites the source. This makes it appealing to the reader because Lord is trying to convince her audience by giving credibility from a high positioned officer. In Kolbert’s “The Darkening Sea”, Kolbert shows how “Caldeira began to model the effects of carbon dioxide on the oceans in 1999, when he did some work for the Department of Energy. The department wanted to know what the environment consequences would be of capturing CO^2 from smokestacks and injecting it deep from the sea” (366). This quote from Kolbert shows how Kolbert uses a scientist to attract the audience. Just like Lord’s text, this quote is coming from a high official who has had a lot of experience around environmental studies. Kolbert uses credibility to attract the audience and successfully confront “the rhetorical challenge of sustainability”. Although both Lord and Kolbert uses ethos, Lord uses ethos more because there are several different sources she uses and credit. In Kolbert’s text,