Blog Assignment #6: Artifact 1's Key Ingredient

Hey everyone,

My ultimate goal with my first artifact is to convince the viewers of my PowerPoint that corn ethanol should not be expanded in production any further.  In order to do this, I needed numerous pieces of information to help me accomplish this goal.  Amongst all of the pieces of information I decided to put in the slideshow, one piece felt like the most convincing argument that I made.  The environmental impacts were those pieces of information.

By comparing corn-based ethanol between more advanced biofuels, I was able to show the very small greenhouse gas reduction that corn ethanol provides.  Deforestation, an aspect I had not considered before researching this project, proved to be a huge hindrance to corn ethanol's environmental benefits.  Nitrogen pollution was in the same boat as deforestation.  All of these environmental considerations contributed together to form a strong piece of evidence against corn ethanol's expansion.  In the PowerPoint, I feel like my artifact's argument began to present itself with my environmental impacts section.  This worked out perfectly, because it felt like I was presenting my strongest evidence right off the bat to engage in the PowerPoint.

After compiling my research, I knew that I wanted to expose corn ethanol's many bad attributes when it comes to the environment.  By presenting these eye-opening statistics, I feel that this artifact accomplished this goal.  In addition to this, those statistics have provided the biggest contribution in my ultimate goal of convincing the viewer to not support corn ethanol's continued expansion.

Doing this artifact has been a great learning experience for me, and I hope my other artifacts feel just the same way.

Thanks for reading,
Matthew Willis