Global Warming is Caused by the Toyota Prius

Save the Planet: Don’t buy a Hybrid

Its the Sun Stupid.

Your ability to live is now threatened. Antarctica is dissolving, the Penguin is doomed, and it’s now so hot out that Al Gore had to shave off his beard. The former veep gives us a curt, conclusive and even frightening prognosis in his new eloquent documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth” — essentially a slideshow where he bangs on about global warming in front of a live studio audience.

Apparently since his close call with Dubbya, he’s been a man on a mission — becoming the Michael Moore of CO2: Lugging his iBook around the globe giving away hundreds of free pie-charted Powerpoint presentations to any green bean who’d listen.

Within Al’s prognostication there is irrefutable evidence, there is conjecture, and (with the touching bit about his son’s near death experience inspiring his courageous yet emotional environmental activism) there is even poetry. But it’s more scare-mongering than scary. It’s more red-herring than red-alert.

There is no definite proof of global warming. No one can say for sure just what is causing the rise in temperature. But there is an inescapable fact. Carbon dioxide is indeed increasing, due partly to man’s burning of fossil fuels and Al Gore’s damp exhalations complaining about man’s burning of fossil fuels.

What Sheikh Mohammad Jihad is doing by pumping useless dead dinosaurs out of the desert for us, is not only making our lives better and more convenient by fueling our Range Rovers and Hummers and Ferrari F430 Spiders with F1 paddle shifters and carbon ceramic brakes, is fueling nature.

Like your 10th grade biology teacher taught you, carbon dioxide is plant food! Plants can veg-out all they want since there’s no limit on how thick forests and shrubs and Poison Ivy can get, and they’ll never suffer from high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or high charge card rates at Lane Bryant. Think of Central park as a fat lady who works doing inventory for a blind Häagen-Daz store owner.

Future outlook for a booming snowboarding business on Kilimanjaro may be bleak, but don’t blame it on the car or my excessive use of Tag body spray. Blame it on the Taliban, blame it on Dubai-Ports, or just blame good ‘ole Al Gore because global warming is a myth. Or, you could just condemn the Sun. Guess what decade the Sun has been at it’s hottest in the past 1000 years. This one.

But I personally blame the Toyota Prius. You see it’s a hybrid car meaning it is powered by electricity and gasoline simultaneously, or alternately, or not at all. It runs on the electric motor in intense traffic like New York City when illegal immigrants are protesting their right to free healthcare and income tax exemption. Also, in Atlantic City after a Clay Aiken concert.

Once the batteries are drained or you hit 20mph or floor the damn thing because it’s slower than continental drift, the gas engine, which has the power of a Cuisinart, kicks in to help out and charge the 38 batteries so you can make it to the nearest hospital to deliver the little kid you just hit when she ran into the middle of the road to get her ball because she couldn’t hear you coming since you were using the silent electric motor to save the skiing industry.

Now at this juncture, Greenpeace types in hippie sandals will point out that the Hybrid’s main purpose is fuel economy and that the Prius gets a fantastic certified 60mpg. Which is almost as fantastic as the certified 78mpg that the VW Lupo Diesel gets. Sure, the Lupo may not be applicable since it’s only available in Europe, but only in the same way that the Prius’ mpg isn’t applicable since the EPA test gets skewed when it’s applied to Hybrids. Even Toyota themselves say that most drivers will get about 20% worse mileage than the ratings would suggest.

It’s no surprise that at $10/gal, half of all European cars are diesels. But here, even at our new $3/gal rate, they’re still rare mainly because of their perceived Britney Spears syndrome: noisy, dirty, smelly, and nasty. However, the EPA has all but eliminated sulfur in diesel starting this June and with the latest diesel technology, the air coming out of the car will be almost cleaner than the air going in. Plus, they’re now quieter than a Mexican crossing the Rio Grande.

And there’s more, the Mercedes E320 TDI (diesel) has more torque than a Porsche 911S and travels 780 miles per tank. Diesels typically get 30% better fuel mileage than their gas brethren and you never need to worry about the stupid battery pack — As any Nokia user knows, after a year or so the nickel-metal-hydride bit doesn’t last nearly as long as it used to and a new one usually costs more than the phone.

The simple fact of the matter is this. Hybrids don’t get any better mileage than Diesels, you pay a larger premium for them, and diesel is about $.20/gal cheaper than cheap ‘regular’. But the worst thing about all Hybrids is that they have two engines! So think of all the factories that have to be built to make the second engine and it’s batteries and how much fuel they’re consuming.

I wouldn’t mind if some eco-freaks want to indulge their lust by trundling along at 55mph and 55mpg in the same way that I like to indulge my lust by blowing by them in my Porsche Cayenne Twin-Turbo V8 SUV at 155mph and 5mpg, sucking their Cough If You Hate SUV’s bumper stickers off with my wake turbulence.

But wearing the hybrid hat just because you think you’re going to bring back the Dodo Bird or fix the hole in the ozone layer or for some perceived virtuousness is nothing more than ignorance. Hybrids are just car firms cashing in. Buy a VW Jetta TDI. You’ll get better mileage and you’ll save Chilly Willy.