argument 33求拍~3.31伤不起啊啊啊啊啊~

普普陶UID: 3266670

The following appeared in a memorandum from the planning department of an electric power company.


"Several recent surveys indicate that home owners are increasingly eager to conserve energy. At the same time， manufacturers are now marketing many home appliances， such as refrigerators and air conditioners， that are almost twice as energy efficient as those sold a decade ago. Also， new technologies for better home insulation and passive solar heating are readily available to reduce the energy needed for home heating. Therefore， the total demand for electricity in our area will not increase—and may decline slightly. Since our three electric generating plants in operation for the past twenty years have always met our needs， construction of new generating plants will not be necessary."


Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.

Ground on the survey about home owners' inclination, synthesizing the fact that appliances now are much more efficient than past, and then supposing new technology's advantage, the speaker accordingly comes to the conclusion that new electric generating plants is not needful. However, several assumptions make the argument groundless thus cast doubt on the line of reasoning.

First of all, the speaker assumes that the decline of refrigerators and air conditioners' energy using is equal to the whole country energy consuming down. However, the speaker cannot substantiate it. What is more, other appliances' information about energy consumption, like television, computer or other electric equipments is not listed. It is entirely possible that other high power appliances like microwave oven, water heater would use much more energy than used to be, or more high power appliances are just invented and would finally lead to higher energy demanding. On this occasion, only refrigerators and air conditioners’ energy saving still cannot make the ends meet. Without ruling out other implements energy consuming circumstances, the judgment of avoiding new plants would be too cursory.

Moreover, the author's provide no justification about the feasibility about the new technologies and residents attitude toward them. As it is new technology, perhaps many home owners have not equipped with it yet. Given that the whole country had possessed it, due to its high price when operating; maybe many owners would use traditional equipments instead of new ones. Meanwhile, though these new technologies could reduce energy needing, to how much could it reduce have not been articulated yet, so it has the possibility that only very small proportion of energy could be saved. In the event of above cases, less energy requirement cannot be guaranteed. Without verifying the new technologies’ feasibility and effect, veto higher energy demanding in the future is unfounded.

Further more, the speaker treat the condition in the past twenty years make no odds in the future. Even admitted that all appliances related to home owners would have higher energy efficiency and new technologies are available, it is not necessarily the case to energy using decline. As the energy furnishing volume that three electric generating plants supplied is just based on last twenty years' data, and the circumstances now maybe changed drastically. For example, more immigrants come to this district which in turn bringing more energy consuming appliances, or per house possess more electric appliances than last due to living standards’ improving. In addition, attribute to build twenty years ago, these plants may have been dilapidated and aged that new plants should be constructed to substitute them. Both of these can augment power supply requirement and consequently more electric generating plants.

In light of above statements, it is self-obvious that the evidences provided by the speaker are insufficient to demonstrate new plants' dispensability. To bolster the argument, more information, such as electronic equipments' power consumption statistics, new technologies' viability and the total population in the country now. Based on these messages, better can we judge the determination.