Q22 - Shortly after the Persian Gulf

[andyevans000]

Really having a tough time wrapping my head around this one. Can someone explain it?

[cyruswhittaker]

I think this question is tricky because it has a lot of detail that can make it confusing.

It's a "resolve the discrepancy" question, so it is crucial to actually determine what the discrepancy is. Essentially, it is that there was less oil contamination and lower levels of PAHs displayed shortly after the Persian Gulf War--during which resulted in lots of oil fires and oil spills--compared to before the war. It would make more sense that there should have been MORE of such contamination shortly after the war.

Choice (D) provides information that helps to resolve this discrepancy. Before the war, there were high levels of PAHs and massive oil dumpings during peacetime oil production and transport.

Wrong Choices:

(A): Irrelevant. Seems to play off the detail in the last sentece about the Baltic Sea, which is a mere distraction.

(B): Out of Scope: We're concerned with differences in the contamination between the two time frame frames, not between geographical regions.

(C): Out of Scope: This is merely a reversal of answer choice (B), so the same reasoning applies. There is no direct link given in the passage to a cause for the levels in relation to geography, so this doesn't help to resolve the discrepancy.

(E): Even if this were true, it does not help to resolve the discrepancy of why the contamination was less after the war.

[giladedelman]

Great explanation!

[jlz1202]

"the detail in the last sentece about the Baltic Sea, which is a mere distraction. " but how to realize distraction like this(temperate oil producing areas) during test? I was trapped by it and "desert region" in the wrong answers.

Also, by "they also reported...PAHs...relatively low" plus the "temperate oil producing areas", I dont understand how come it relates to PAH changes in terms of pre-war and after-war?

thank you very much for help!

[anjelica.grace]

"the detail in the last sentece about the Baltic Sea, which is a mere distraction. " but how to realize distraction like this(temperate oil producing areas) during test? I was trapped by it and "desert region" in the wrong answers.

Also, by "they also reported...PAHs...relatively low" plus the "temperate oil producing areas", I dont understand how come it relates to PAH changes in terms of pre-war and after-war?

thank you very much for help!

i actually have the exact same concerns. I chose (C). I see why (D) is correct now but I was thrown off by what seemed like two separate but related discrepancies. The one comparing contamination levels before and after the war. And one comparing PAH levels between desert and temperate regions.

Also, another reason I initially rejected (D) is because I interpreted peacetime as the period after the war. I see how it pertains to before the war, but that term is very ambiguous especially since the comparison is before and after the war, presumable both peacetime periods.

Any help understanding my own flawed reasoning would be much appreciated!

[theanswer21324]

Hey guys

Thanks for the great discussion so far. I've gone through all the Manhattan prep material, and I only recently started using the Forum but I've found it to be a great help. Keep up the great work - it really puts you guys over the top against competitors in LSAT prep

I'm still a bit confused by this problem. I was really tempted by (D), but I ultimately rejected it because it seemed to explain only half of the discrepancy. If you only know that there was massive oil dumping in peacetime, how does that explain why the levels during wartime are comparable to the temperate areas in the Baltic Sea? Answer (D) appears to leave open the possibility that there was still a lot of oil during the war, just not as much as there was during peacetime.

I picked (C) because it seemed to a do a better job at resolving the discrepancy. If oil contamination dissipates fairly rapidly, then that could mean that there were oil spills during the war, but they dissipated so the levels became comparable to peacetime. It could also explain why, despite the oil spills, the amount fo PAH was comparable to the Baltic (the oil dissipated to reach the level of the Baltic).

I applied a similar line of thinking to reach (C) that was described in a different post in the Forum about a problem related to Oxygen 18 molecules from an earlier test, so I was surprised to see that I got this wrong.

What do you guys think? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[tommywallach]

Hey Guys,

For those of you tempted by (C), I think you're missing the big issue: our question isn't about a geographic comparison, it's about a temporal comparison. We want to know why there's less oil waste around during peacetime than during war.

Answer choice (C) would be irrelevant. Even if stuff dissipates more rapidly in desert areas, we're talking about the same area here, at two different times. It would dissipate at that rate all the time!

Answer choice (D) explains why there might be more oil during peacetime.

Hope that helps!

-t

[SherrilynM911]

I'm still confused as to why E is incorrect. It says that the war ended before the damage could be worse - wouldn't that explain the lower levels of contamination? What am I missing here?