Rhetorical Appeal: Logos
Bear with me here, I know this might initially seem like a reach, but I believe that Oliver’s main rhetorical strategy is logos. Logos is a tactic of persuasion that appeals to the audience’s logic (Demirdogen, 2010). Yes, the brief showing of the photoshopped polar bear standing on a tiny ice island did elicit some emotion, but this was not Oliver’s main goal with his skit. His script focuses on a statistic saying that 97.1% of scientists are in consensus that humans are the cause of global warming- a factual statement. Using this factual statement, he appeals to the logic that in science, a theory is generally accepted as true if the majority is in consensus. This standard is held by the majority of scientists, which is why ideas from people like the janitor from Scrubs aren’t acted upon:
Oliver demands that the debate on climate change be represented accurately on his show, so he enlists the help of 97 scientists to argue with 3 climate change skeptics. You can tell they’re scientists because they’re all wearing white lab coats, and all scientists are constantly wearing white lab coats. All jokes aside, it is quite logical of Oliver to differentiate the appearance of the scientists from the appearance of the skeptics. When they’re all on stage, it is easy to pick out the overwhelming ratio of scientists to skeptics. The swarm of lab coats surrounding three pant suit-clad skeptics acts as a visual aid for the statistic, making it more tangible to viewers. Through this, he applies to the age-old logic that majority rules to convince viewers to believe in climate change.
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