It Will Not be Possible to Implicate Melting Sea Ice in the Coastal Flooding that Many Global Warming Models have Projected

Question: It will not be possible to implicate melting sea ice in the coastal flooding that many global warming models have projected: just like a glass of water that will not overflow due to melting ice cubes, so melting ice does not increase oceanic volume.

1. Like a glass of water that will not overflow due to melting ice cubes,
2. Like melting ice cubes that do not cause a glass of water to overflow,
3. A glass of water will not overflow because of melting ice cubes,
4. As melting ice cubes that do not cause a glass of water to overflow
5. As melting ice cubes do not cause a glass of water to overflow,

“It will not be possible to implicate melting sea ice in the coastal flooding that many global warming models have projected”- is a GMAT sentence correction question. This particular GMAT sentence correction topic has been taken from the book ‘The Official Guide of GMAT Verbal Review, 2nd Edition, 2009’. This question checks Parallelism, Comparison of two elements and Modifiers. GMAT Sentence Correction questions comprise 11-16 questions to be completed within 65 minutes. Each Sentence Correction question contains a sentence with an underlined portion that includes 0-2 errors.

Answer: E

Explanation: The following concepts are tested here:

1. Meaning
2. Comparison
3. Idioms

Option A: Incorrect
This option is incorrect because it incorrectly compares “a glass of water that will not overflow due to melting ice cubes” to “melting sea ice”. The intended comparison is between “melting ice cubes” and “melting sea ice”. Also, this option incorrectly modifies the verb phrase “will not overflow” with the phrase “due to melting ice cubes”. Always remember that “due to” can only be used to modify nouns. So, Option A is incorrect.

Option B: Incorrect
This option is incorrect because it compares the noun phrase “melting ice cubes that do not cause a glass of water to overflow” to a clause “melting sea ice does not increase oceanic volume”. Always remember that comparisons can be made only between two similar elements. So, Option B is incorrect.

Option C: Incorrect
This option is incorrect because it changes the meaning of the sentence by using the phrase “a glass of water will not overflow because of melting ice cubes, so”. It illogically implies that because a glass of water will not overflow due to melting ice cubes, melting sea ice does not increase oceanic volume. So, Option C is incorrect.

Option D: Incorrect
This option is incorrect because it compares the noun phrase “melting ice cubes that do not cause a glass of water to overflow” to a clause “melting sea ice does not increase oceanic volume”. Always remember that a comparison can be made only between similar elements. So, Option D is incorrect.

Option E: Correct
This option is correct because it correctly compares the similar elements in the sentence and also maintains the correct idiomatic construction. The inclusion of the comparison marker “as” correctly conveys the intended meaning of the sentence. So, Option E is correct.

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