Rhetorical Comparison Paper: Tom Bethell and Jonathan Golob (Coursework Sample)

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Rhetorical Comparison Paper
The arguments presented by Tom Bethell and Jonathan Golob are rhetorical in the strictest sense. Both authors employ rhetorical strategies to persuade the reader to believe the submissions they make about the climate change debate. Golob is a pro-climate change enthusiast while Bethell is an anti-climate change writer whose approach takes a conservative approach that seeks to dismiss the idea that the globe is on the verge of destruction as a result of the effects of global warming. This rhetorical analysis involves an examination of the argumentative strategies employed by both Bethell and Golob to convince the reader. The core focus is how both authors differ in exploiting the potency of pathos, ethos, and logos to appeal to the reader to accept or reject the climate change narrative respectively. The authors essentially use rhetorical appeals to make their arguments appealing with a deliberate sense of fact-checking in manner that makes the climate change debate more entrenched than ever before.
A comparison of Golob’s and Bethell’s rhetorical strategies reveals that the former used a lot of pathos while the later appealed more to the logos of the argument to maintain the consistency of the argument. An appeal to pathos means that the author or the speaker on a particular subject invokes the beliefs and values of the target audience in order to make rhetorical sense. The main reason for invoking pathos as a rhetorical strategy is to seek empathy to using imaginable stories that elicit the logical appeals that can sway the audience to the speaker or the writer’s side of the argument. When a writer or a speaker uses pathos, the intention is to appeal to the feelings and imaginations so that each person in an audience so that they can figure out how the argument can potentially impacts the world around them. Logos, on the other hand, is a keen focus on the message with a deliberate appeal to reason whereby the author or writer makes an argument that has a lot internal consistency and clarity through the use of data and hard facts to support claims that support the argument.
Turning to Golob’s and Bethell’s argument, the former employs pathos as a rhetorical strategy as follows:
In the first paragraph, Golob mentions Richard Feynman whom he refers to has “my scientific hero” (Golob). Feynman was among the first scientists to predict the potential effects of an arms race on nuclear weapons after making skeptical remarks about the devastating effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings towards the end the First World War. Feynman was a scientific hero of the mid and the late Twentieth Century and today. Invoking his name in the argument simply appeals to the values and beliefs associated the work and life and the Twentieth Century iconic scientists. Besides, the story of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is unimaginable yet equally horrific due to the effects of the atomic bombs. Golob’s decision to compare the unimaginable effects of the atomic bombs with the potential effects of climate change is one of the most interesting uses of pathos in opinion writing or commentary. According to Feynman, the smashed remains he witnessed embodied the potential nuclear annihilation that the world was to contemplate. Humanity, in this sense, had no future to anticipate because human beings were out to annihilate each other. Another aspect of Pathos in Gobb’s argument is the deliberate mention of Stalin. Stalin is a divisive and emotive Soviet figure in American politics because he ruled the Soviet Union at a time when the United States was embroiled in a Cold War that threatened to plunge the world in a possible World War Three that could have involved the use of nuclear weapons on both sides of the conflict. By mentioning Stalin, Golob intends to use American values and beliefs to add more gravity to the significance of the climate change argument to Americans. As much as the climate change argument is completely unrelated to Stalin or other Soviet politicians, but it has a cultural impact on ordinary readers with an emotional magnitude of the tensions characterizing the Cold War Era.
Bethell uses logos to win over the anti-climate change supporters. One of the major ways writers and speakers use logos is their attempt to use facts from reliable sources regardless of whether the said facts are reliable or not. In this case, Bethell quotes an article by Newsweek, a reputable international magazine. The article talks ab...