#27 - Global Reference, Must Be True

[Administrator]

Please post below with any questions!

[dtodaizzle]

I ended up choosing (E)....I can see why (B) is right now. I interpreted "more environmentally friendly refrigerant chemicals" as chemicals that are still damaging to the environment...If these refrigerant chemicals did no damage to the environment, wouldn't the author word the last sentence as "refrigerant chemicals that do no damage?"

I also understand that there is a temporal aspect to it, so would answer choice (E) still be wrong if these chemicals were manufactured after 1987 instead of "today?"

Thanks!!

[David Boyle]

I ended up choosing (E)....I can see why (B) is right now. I interpreted "more environmentally friendly refrigerant chemicals" as chemicals that are still damaging to the environment...If these refrigerant chemicals did no damage to the environment, wouldn't the author word the last sentence as "refrigerant chemicals that do no damage?"

I also understand that there is a temporal aspect to it, so would answer choice (E) still be wrong if these chemicals were manufactured after 1987 instead of "today?"

Thanks!!

Hello dtodaizzle,

"If these refrigerant chemicals did no damage to the environment, wouldn't the author word the last sentence as "refrigerant chemicals that do no damage?"" No, not necessarily.
I am not sure what you mean by your last sentence; "today" is after 1987, among other things. In any case, we have no reason to suppose that answer E, "ome of the refrigerant chemicals being manufactured today contain chemicals known to be environmentally damaging", is true. Maybe they don't have those damaging chemicals.

Hope this helps,
David

[wrjackson1]

Hi, I'm confused between E and B. To me, it seems like you are using the same argument to discredit E and using it to support B. For me, it seemed like an chlorine would be environmentally damaging. Because of this, I read acceptance of B as the right answer as having to accept E as another right answer as well. I can see why B is correct, I just really want to nail down to get over this "thought" hurdle

[Francis O'Rourke]

Hi Jackson,

It's okay in this case to use the same argument to support one answer choice and discredit another, since the two choices make different claims.

It seems like you understand why answer choice (B) is correct, so let's look at answer choice (E) in detail. This one tells us that some—at least one—refrigerant chemicals that are manufactured today contain chemicals known to damage the environment. This seems like an easy statement to prove, since we only have to show that there is at least one refrigerant chemical being produced that damages the environment.

So what do we know about the environmentally damaging chemicals today? In 1987 we banned ozone-depleting gases. We don't know if this was somewhat effective or 100% effective however. We know that CFCs were banned in North America in 1979, and that this led to a transformation in manufacturing. We again don't know if this was ban totally effective or not.

We don't know anything about the other environmentally damaging chemicals that possibly exist in refrigerants, except that there are fewer of them, or they are less damaging (line 59-60), but again we don't know if we completely eliminated them or if we only lessened them somewhat.

The point here is that it seems very likely that answer choice (E) could be true, but we simply do not have any evidence from the passage as to what refrigerants are in production at the time that the passage was written. If we do not have evidence from the passage as to what chemicals are being manufactured 'today,' then we cannot claim that this statement is supported by the passage.

[chian9010]

I don't understand why B is the correct answer. For me, I think D makes more sense.

First of all, from line 50 it is clear the the Montreal Protocol ban the production of ozone-depleting gases. And in line 56 it clearly indicates that "CFCs were banned in the late 1970 in North America"

Therefore, why D is wrong?

In addition, from the article it is clear to know that the reason that CFCs is environmental dangerous is because it's constituent element - chlorine and we also know from line 37-42 that even if the production and the use of CFCs were to cease immediately, the depletion of the ozone layer would continue for years." Therefore, with the Montreal Protocol activated in 1987 I believe the last sentence in the last paragraph where it indicates "more environmentally friendly refrigerant chemical" means the substituted chemical has no chlorine as the constituent element. B is not that accurate as it should be NO chlorine released into the atmosphere.

Comparing D and B, I think D is much more accurate. Please help me identify why D is wrong!

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Chian,

The problem with answer choice (D) is one of timing. The Montreal Protocol is described as occurring in 1987, but the passage also states that North America stopped using CFCs in the 1970s. So since the Montreal Protocol happened after the 70s, it couldn't have caused the cessation of CFCs in the 1970s.

Hope that helped!
Rachael

[gwlsathelp]

A is incorrect because the passage does not indicate whether or not there are chemicals outside of CFCs that are refrigerants. All we know is that CFC is a refrigerant. The second paragraph is the first place you see refrigerant mentioned and the last paragraph states that "in North America, CFCs were banned in the late 1970s, leading to [...] the development of more environmentally friendly refrigerant chemicals," which is after the time Molina and Rowland suggested that CFC production ceases and still gives no indication whether or not other refrigerants existed before then.

C is incorrect because there is no indication in the passage why CFCs were developed or if they were more energy-efficient refrigerants.

D is incorrect because of the last sentence of the passage. The cessation was due to it being banned in the late 1970s.

E is incorrect because (although it may be true) the passage does not indicate whether or not that exists. It only discusses that the use of CFCs has basically ceased. When going through this test, I chose this answer choice because my line of reasoning was, "well, which countries are included in this international agreement?" The answer is "I don't know because the passage doesn't indicate it." Additionally, there is no indication about what refrigerants look like today, we only know that the Montreal Protocol of 1987 occurred and a little before that time, development of more environmentally friendly refrigerant chemicals had begun.

B is the correct answer because by the time 1987 rolled around, North America was in the development of more environmentally-friendly/CFC-free refrigerant substitutes due to the CFC (AKA chlorine) ban in the late 1970s. The phrasing of this answer choice is confusing as it states, chemical refrigerants "release fewer chlorine atoms into the stratosphere than CFCs do." Fewer, in LSAT terms, indicates a decrease relative to something, like chlorine atoms released by CFCs; and that decrease includes anywhere from zero to just right below the amount of chlorine atoms CFCs released into the atmosphere.

Hopefully, this helps. Excuse any redundancies and spelling errors.