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  3. Environmental asceticism has created a vogue for upgrading light-bulbs and tweaking thermostats (恒温器). But according to a new pi

Environmental asceticism has created a vogue for upgrading light-bulbs and tweaking thermostats (恒温器). But according to a new pi

admin2012-07-05  65
问题     Environmental asceticism has created a vogue for upgrading light-bulbs and tweaking thermostats (恒温器). But according to a new piece of research, many of these actions—however virtuous—arise from faulty perceptions of energy savings.
    Shahzeen Attari of Columbia University and her colleagues recruit 505 volunteers from across America. Each was asked to estimate the energy consumption of nine household devices as well as the energy savings incurred by six green activities. The researchers then compared the volunteers’ estimates with the actual energy requirements or savings in question.
    Their results suggest that although people do grasp basic energy trends, they are decidedly hazy on the details. On average, participants underestimated both energy use and energy savings by a factor of 2. 8— mostly because they undervalued the requirements of large machines like heaters and clothes dryers. As a result, they failed to recognize the huge energy savings that can come from improving the efficiency of such appliances.
    Miscalculations like these hinder conservation efforts. When asked to rank the single most effective way to save energy, participants typically endorsed activities with small savings, such as turning off lights, while ignoring what they could economize on larger devices. This suggests that people misallocate their efforts, fretting (烦恼) over an unattended lamp (at 100 watts) while neglecting the energy they could save by shifting their washer settings from "hot" to "warm" (4 000 watt-hours for each load of laundry).
    A quirk (怪癖) of human psychology could help to explain these persistent underestimates. When calculating such things, people often adopt a familiar unit as a mental scale and then generate predictions based on that unit. As a side-effect, their estimates cluster too closely around the measure—a phenomenon called "anchoring."
    This suggests an obvious criticism: by providing the light-bulb figure, the researchers primed their subjects to underestimate energy consumption. But the authors argue that rather than introducing a methodological flaw, they simply acknowledged a shared point of reference. When it comes to an accessible, quantitative measure of energy, consumers are uniquely familiar with the 100W bulb. As a result, Dr. Attari expects bulbs to exert an anchoring effect on the general population as well as on her volunteers, contributing to widespread underestimates of the energy demands of large appliances.
Why do people fail to realize the energy savings from improving the efficiency of appliances?
选项 A、Because they overlook the use of energy-saving appliances.
B、Because they don’t know the details of basic energy trends.
C、Because they underestimate the demands of highly energy-consuming appliances.
D、Because they tend to miscalculate the energy consumption of larger appliances.
答案C
解析 推理判断题。定位句指出人们没能意识到通过提高电器的工作效率节约能源的原因，即人们低估了高能耗电器的用电需求，故答案为C)。
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