1. Apply Toulmin's Model of Argumentation to the article below. Identify the key claim in the article. Use Toulmin's Model to analyze your key claim: Identify all the evidence, warrants, backing, qualifiers, rebuttals and conclusions.

2. What are two strong Toulmin elements in the article's argument you have chosen, and explain why? [Select your elements from the key claim, additional supporting claims, evidence, rebuttals, qualifiers, and overall support. Detail your response with evidence from the source, and remember to describe why these elements are effective.]

3. In comparison, what are two weak Toulmin elements in the argument and explain why? [Select elements from the key claim, additional supporting claims, evidence, rebuttals, qualifiers, and overall support. Detail your response with evidence from the source, and remember to describe why these elements are not effective.]

4. Do you agree with the author, and why?

Kevin Libin: Oil didn't cause the Fort McMurray fire it helped save people's lives

Without the incredible benefits of modern petroleum technologies, the death toll caused by natural disasters today would be frightfully higher

Author of the article:

Kevin Libin

Publishing date:

May 06, 2016Last Updated 4 years ago1 minute read

There are countless stories of human heroism to be found in this week's mass evacuation of 88,000 people from Fort McMurray safely, without any reported injuries or deaths. But there's one hero that will go unsung, as usual, despite showing up as asaviourin virtually every harrowing news report about the emergency. So, please, let's all take a moment now to thank our lucky stars for ... oil.

The technology of fossil fuel combustion is relatively modern; forest combustion is not. Wildfires have been routinely sweeping across vast swathes of Albertan forest long before the first settler arrived. The regular, mass conflagration of immense stands of trees is a natural and necessary part of a forest's life cycle. But now that we've put cities in fire's path, the only critical chemical substance that has kept humans from succumbing to those flames also happens to be Alberta's No. 1 export to the world: wonderful, unloved petroleum.

As alarm over the approaching flames began rapidly spreading through Fort McMurray Tuesday night, and the evacuation was ordered, there was one thing everyone desperately wanted access to: a car or truck with a tank full of gasoline, so they could drive themselves and their loved ones to safety.

Oilsands production shutdown from Fort McMurray wildfire another blow to sector

Service stations were lined up hundreds deep. Fleet of buses were commandeered to clear people out ofneighbourhoods. One fast-thinking resident, MohamadBouchaala, a Suncor employee, realizing his own car's tank was too low on fuel to get far, had to scramble to the airport to rent a fully gassed Jeep to save his wife and three kids. As National Post reporter Tristin Hopper reported in an inspiring story, dozens of volunteers loaded up trucks with tanks and cans filled with diesel and gasoline to distribute to those needing it. United Rentals in Fort McMurray offered up its available fuel trucks. Good Samaritans patrolled the roads leading out of town providing food, water, blankets and, of course, unleaded petrol, to anyone stranded on the highway. People siphoned gas to share from their tanks to theirneighbours.

It goes without saying, although it's often unsaid, that without the incredible benefits of modern petroleum technologies, the death toll caused by natural disasters today would be frightfully higher. Oil didn't just fuel the cars, trucks and buses that spirited nearly 100,000people safely away from deadly smoke and flames. It powers firefighting aircraft working to control the blaze. It whisks first responders to the most urgent emergencies. Oil also happens to be the reason for the work camps near Fort McMurray where thousands have found shelter. Oil funded andfueledthe transport planes, furnished by the oil companies that own them, used to shuttle Fort McMurray residents to family support networks in Calgary and Edmonton. The oil industry's obsessive safety culture, drilled into Fort Mac's workers, no doubt made a crucial difference in residents making it out in such a timely and healthy condition. Oil even made possible the plastic bottles of water being donated to the shelters. Keep that in mind the next time environmentalists demand an end to the bottled-water industry.

And yet, instead of being hailed as the singularly crucial lifesaver that it has been, oil instead is taking the blame for the fire. Climate alarmists want you to believe that if it weren't for the carbon emissions created by oil, the people of Fort McMurray would not be facing this crisis. It's certainly true that, without oil, there would be far fewer people in Fort McMurray (although there would be some; sited advantageously at a crossroads of rivers north of Edmonton, it was before the oilsands the province's gateway to the boreal forest and a hub of waterway transport, first a trading post, later acentrefor processors of fish and salt). And without oil, those who lived there today would be poorer, too. They would also be, largely, sitting ducks in the path of an out-of-control forest fire.

There would be forest fires, even without oil. Ones just as terrible, even if you happen to believe they would come less frequently if it weren't for our cursed carbon economy. That's the carefully hedged wording of those who very much want to blame humans for this tragedy, but lack evidence to back it up. Forestry professor David Martell cautiously worded it like this, after being questioned about the global warming link by Peter Mansbridge on CBC Wednesday night: "you can't look at any particular fire and say this fire is the result of climate change," Martell said. And that should settle the matter right there. But Martell added that, if "we go ahead 50 years" and saw more huge fires like this, "we'd probably reasonably conclude" that climate change caused at least some of them.

That's a lot of speculation and conjecture about probable reasonable conclusions five decades out. Whatever you believe, though, it's still a fact that large fires like this will happen, more or less, whether we use oil or we don't. But as anyone who made it out of Fort Mac in time will tell you, whether you and your family survive the next fire or any other natural disaster depends on whether you have petroleum products or not.

That's why obsessive climate zealots like Elizabeth May have it once again exactly backwards. The leader of the rapidly fading Green Party managed to provoke national media attention Wednesday for jumping on the crisis at Fort McMurray to demand Canadians "slash" fossil fuel consumption to prevent future wildfires. But no real scientist believes that wildfires can becompletely prevented. Forests around Canadian townsites are already dangerously old and tindery, since they're no longer allowed to regenerate through regular burning. And whether they wreak devastation across an uninhabited hillside, or your local downtown depends as much on a sudden change in wind direction as happened to Fort McMurray as it does anything else. In fact, the only thing we can control is how prepared we are to escape them when they come. All the wind turbines and solar panels in the world won't help rescue 88,000 people from a rapidly spreading inferno. For a miracle like that, we can only count on oil.

References

Libin, K. (2016, May 5). Financial Post Opinion. Retrieved May 9, 2016, from "Oil didn't cause the Fort McMurray fire it helped save people's lives":http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/kevin-libin-oil-didnt-cause-the-fort-mcmurray-fire-it-helped-save-peoples-lives