Q17

[norginz]

For question 17, I narrowed it down to D and E but guessed D. Can you explain why E and not D. Thanks.

[bbirdwell]

I think you mean question 7, so I changed the subject of this thread...

This is a tough one to explain.

The better we understand the original, the better we'll be able to make an analogy. Scientists want to find out how much the volcanoes are affecting climate, and to do this properly, they need to factor in El-Niño. The first sentence of paragraph 3 tells us that the El Niño data needs to be subtracted.

(D) is tricky because crime reports and actual crimes are different things. Just because we subtract false crime reports, we won't necessarily be left with an accurate number of crimes -- we'll be left with an accurate number of verified crime reports. Also, there's no notion of causation here, which is a pretty essential part of the original case: what's causing the cooling -- volcanoes or El Niño.

(E) is better, though it's worded in an awkward way. It's a better match because it presents the idea that we want to calculate average age, which matches "cooling effects" in the original. And it also includes the concept of attribution, or causation -- here, attributing the change to births without considering immigrants, which matches attributing the cooling to volcanoes without considering El Niño.

[nflamel69]

I;m actually interested in seeing the explanation of #17. I'm having trouble understanding why is it b and not e? I actually chose b just because the cost of the resource is no where found in passage. but where is e supported?

[bbirdwell]

(E) is a kind of conservation, like that mentioned in lines 50-55. "Improvement in resource management."

It's also supported by the lines above and below that describe "alternatives to growth" that still accomplish the satisfaction of wants.

Cutting back on OVERproduction clearly fits in with these ideas.

(B) is simply about cost, which is not part of the steady-state discussion here. Rather, the discussion is about growth vs conservation.