Joseph Romm responds in his blog
post ‘The Washington Post lets George Will reassert all his climate falsehoods
plus some new ones’ to George Will’s article ‘Dark green doomsayers’. In this
post he wants to make the readers aware of George Will’s falsehood regarding
his latest publication. As far as the credibility, known as the Ethos, of the
text is concerned, Romm tries to convince the audience by labeling himself as a
climate expert. Apart from that he also points to his parents, who are
award-winning journalists. When it comes to the Pathos, he tries to appeal to
the reader’s emotions by referring to Will’s confidence game, i.e. the
reassertions in his second column stating that his "lies" are indeed
factual. Moreover, a strong Logos can be found in the text as well. So the
author tries to be both convincing and persuasive and therefore reasons
logically by citing different source texts as well as by uncovering plagiarism.
For example, he refers to Will, citing Steven Chu directly even though the
latter was already citing somebody else when he talked about this certain issue. On the whole, Romm used Ethos, Logos
and Pathos the right way and thus was able to make his story credible.
[205 words]
