Car and Driver rails against Al Gore

I haven't yet seen Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth". Still, it seems that Car and Driver's criticism of Gore and the film is a lot of head-in-the-sand denial. I have to agree with AutoblogGreen reader Gregger, who pointed us to the column and says he thinks the article is a "pretty irresponsible piece of editorialization".
Car and Driver columnist Patrick Bedard, writing in the September issue, calls Gore's warnings about global warming "paranoia" and sounds more like an evangelical Christian pleading for you to have faith than someone who is writing about cars. Bedard claims that since the glaciers retreated thousands of years ago, there's no need to worry about sending countless tons of CO2 into the atmosphere today. Sure, it's hotter now, he says, but it's been getting hotter for a while.

Those are the words of someone who doesn't want to take a look at some of the facts about how humans have influenced global warming in recent years (like for example how the flow of ice from glaciers in Greenland has more than doubled over the past decade, according to the film's website). Bedard goes on to say that the real culprit is natural CO2 and water vapor. OK, but where does the water vapor come from? National Geographic says that "heat from other greenhouse gases is causing more water to evaporate, releasing the vapor into the atmosphere above Europe. That vapor in turn, adds to the greenhouse effect, further warming the region [Europe]".

Maybe Bedard is just mad that someone would dare criticize his lifestyle of driving all the cars he wants in this world. He's been at Car and Driver for thirty years and drove for Jaguar and in the Indy 500 before that. How dare a vice president make the claim that his life has been bad for the environment?

[Source: Car and Driver, hat tip to Gregger]

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