Unfortunately that "Popular Mechanics" reference appears to be false: the December 1941 issue [1] did feature an article "Pitch Hitters for Defense" which inclu

Unfortunately that "Popular Mechanics" reference appears to be false: the December 1941 issue [1] did feature an article "Pitch Hitters for Defense" which included Ford's car experiments, but the entire focus was on supplanting the use of metals to free capacity for the military use. Carbon dioxide, greenhouse effect, or any environmental discussion is quite absent. (The advertising in the issue is interesting since even just before Pearl Harbor there's a lot of military references. My (very limited) understanding was that isolationism was strong but apparently far from pacifism) [1] https://archive.org/download/PopularMechanics1941/Popular_Mechanics_12_1941_text.pdf https://archive.org/download/PopularMechanics1941/Popular_Me...