▶ Your Answer : In the reading passage, there is ample support for the author's claim that coal will be continuously used by people in the future. However, the professor in the lecture gives several reasons as a rebuttal to the author's point. First, the professor contends that the process of mining coal is complex. The amount of coal stored near the surface of the Earth is limited, and it is now nearly depleted. Therefore, one needs to make the burrows of more than a hundred meters in order to reach coal, and it is evident that advanced techniques and adroit workers are highly required. This casts doubt on the reading passage's claim that it is extremely easy to extract coal, because it exists near the surface, so people can save a great deal of time and effort to get it. Next, the professor insists that it requires lots of expenses to transport coal. Since coal is hefty, one should pay much money to load and ship it. Furthermore, budget spent to buy coal becomes to increase due to the fact that power plants need a large amount of coal to generate electricity. This refutes the reading passage's assertion that soild coal is easy to be shipped, while other forms of fuels such as petroleum, natural gas, and hydrogen are arduous to be transported, which is attribued to their risk of explosion or leakage. Finally, the professor argues that an idea that the coal industry is able to create a wealth of jobs is not plausible. In effect, companies relevant to managing coal have put their best foot forward to increase the efficiency of the factories by introducing automatic systems. This resulted in the reduced number of employees, and it is obvious that this trend will continue, considering the fact that coal enterprises are still trying to make their factories more efficient. This counters the reading passage's suggestion that the coal industry provides workers with a tremendous array of jobs in that there are a diversity of careers related to it and the requirements for energy rises constantly.
|