This Article Is the Dumbest, most illogical argument I've ever heard of?

Question

"Mother Nature feels the pains of divorce
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer | Posted Tue Dec 4, 2007 3:48pm PST "

This article says when people divorce they use two households, fuel uses double, and it goes on and on. What a crock of poo.
If people were NOT married they would live in separate homes, and use their own fuel etc. Obviously, these writer is just sounding off, and stating an unsupported, undocumented emotional tirad.
What do you think?

Look Sammy--I have the knowledge to understand the Study! Do NOT insult me--you're the one who is talking out your buttocks, not me!

Answer 1

But you didn't present any argument against the conclusions of the study, that people who are divorced "use two households, fuel uses double, and it goes on and on".

Just because you don't have the knowledge to understand the importance of a study, doesn't make the study pointless. I can think of many important uses of the study. When government tries to predict how much energy a population needs in the future, knowing what causes energy use to go up and down is very very helpful. As you are evidently not aware, US soldiers are dying for oil in Iraq, people are paying 3 times as much for gasoline as they did several years ago, energy byproducts are destroying the envronment and causing global climate change - with severe effects for all of us. This is an important issue, whether you understand it or not.

Answer 2

Hey everybody ! Grab the reins ! Don't make the same mistake the questioner is accusing the writer of.
Get your facts before giving your opinion.

It's a short article: here it is:

"Mother Nature Feels the Pains of Divorce"
Divorce can be bad for the environment. In countries around the world divorce rates have been rising, and each time a family dissolves the result is two new households.

"A married household actually uses resources more efficiently than a divorced household," said Jianguo Liu, an ecologist at Michigan State University whose analysis of the environmental impact of divorce appears in this week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

More households means more use of land, water and energy, three critical resources, Liu explained in a telephone interview.

Households with fewer people are simply not as efficient as those with more people sharing, he explained. A household uses the same amount of heat or air conditioning whether there are two or four people living there. A refrigerator used the same power whether there is one person home or several. Two people living apart run two dishwashers, instead of just one.

Liu, who researches the relationship of ecology with social sciences, said people seem surprised by his findings at first, and then consider it simple. "A lot of things become simple after the research is done," he said.

Some extra energy or water use may not sound like a big deal, but it adds up. ADVERTISEMENT



The United States, for example, had 16.5 million households headed by a divorced person in 2005 and just over 60 million households headed by a married person.

Per person, divorced households spent more per person per month for electricity compared with a married household, as multiple people can be watching the same television, listening to the same radio, cooking on the same stove and or eating under the same lights.

That means some $6.9 billion in extra utility costs per year, Liu calculated, plus an added $3.6 billion for water, in addition to other costs such as land use.

And it isn't just the United States.

Liu looked at 11 other countries such as Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Greece, Mexico and South Africa between 1998 and 2002.

In the 11, if divorced households had combined to have the same average household size as married households, there could have been a million fewer households using energy and water in these countries.

"People have been talking about how to protect the environment and combat climate change, but divorce is an overlooked factor that needs to be considered," Liu said.

Liu stressed that he isn't condemning divorce: "Some people really need to get divorces." But, he added, "one way to be more environmentally friendly is to live with other people and that will reduce the impact."

Don't get smug, though, married folks _ savings also apply to people living together and Shaker communities or even hippie communes would have been even more efficient.

So, what prompts someone to figure out the environmental impact of divorce?

Liu was studying the ecology of areas with declining population and noticed that even where the total number of people was less, the number of households was increasing. He wondered why.

There turned out to be several reasons: divorce, demographic shifts such as people remaining single longer and the demise of multigenerational households.

"I was surprised because the divorce rate actually has been up and down for many years in some of the countries ... but we found the proportion of divorced households has increased rapidly across the globe," he said.

So he set out to measure the difference, such as in terms of energy and water, land use and construction materials and is now reporting the results for divorce.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station.

Answer 3

I couldn't agree more these idiots don't think before they speak actually when they divorce the fuel consumption goes down by half in the married household and up by the same in the new household therefore the fuel consumption is the same in two houses as it was in one

Answer 4

Crock of poo alright! The trouble is that these ridiculous studies and surveys are being given the air of authority, and held up as evidence and proof against people. For example, a wife may be able to additionally sue her divorcing husband, for hurting their environment. Follow the money trail....

Answer 5

And the cows farts send off too much Co2 they say and chimps have better memories lol shows how ignorant they think people really are! Truth it just shows them how ignorant we all are that we allow and not contradict them! I called on the scientist about the chimps situation and asked them how many worries the chimps have like studies,finals,money worries,house payments,gas prices and so on they declined to answer!

Answer 6

I agree, this article takes the cake for stupidity. Who's making the editorial decisions at AP? I think they should be fired.