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.
Although at face value it may appear that the demand for electricity in the future may decline, but under close scrutiny, the memorandum contains several flaws which casts doubt on lack of necessity to construct new generating plants.
In the first place, the planning department resorts to results of recent survey but does not provide any information regarding the validity and reliability of the survey, the number of population who have been surveyed, the reasons they raise for their willingness toward energy conservation as well as in response to what type of inquiries they have expressed their opinions. Therefore, such claim would be ruled out as the result from such tenuous evidence is not sufficient.
It is quite obvious that technology is growing in every aspect, knowing that manufacturers are producing more energy efficient products is not surprising. The more significant issue is to what degree these new state-of-the-art appliances are used by vast majority of a typical society and how affordable they are to grassroots. Unless we are ensured that people definitely apply these efficient goods, any argument that the electricity expenditure is most likely to be decreased is unacceptable.
In continuation, the same scenario is enumerated for better home insulation and passive solar heating because the argument fails to reveal what guarantees are at their disposal whether people tend or afford to substitute these cutting edge technologies in order to reduce their energy consumption.
While the memorandum deals with compelling evidence that new technologies are promising for the future use of energy, but no reference is being made to the readiness and awareness of people concerning their possible reactions and behaviors as well as to the population growth trends and subsequently their further demands.
In conclusion, the memorandum from the planning department of an electric power company does not produce a cogent case for ruling out any further necessity of construction new generating plants. There are many unstated reasons that may augment the future demand of proliferation of power plants as it is obscure what novel requirements in the future may compel power plant companies to develop their power production capacities.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 10 15
No. of Words: 354 350
No. of Characters: 1884 1500
No. of Different Words: 205 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.338 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.322 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.88 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 145 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 109 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 62 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 35.4 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.611 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.6 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.357 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.756 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.061 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5