To the editor:

Al Gore, the non-scientist who invented the Internet, confirms global warming is anthropocentric. Orchestrated like automatons, the mass media and academia, not to mention letters to the editor, shout amen with dire pronouncements of bird and amphibian extinctions, accompanied by the apocalyptic collapse of the Earth’s environment.

Long warm periods, such as the middle ages before 1300 A.D., have given the Earth an abundance of plant and animal life. Global warming by man would require centuries of burning fossil fuels to return fossil hydrocarbons in the form of CO2 and H2O to the atmosphere and oceans from which they originally came. From the fossils in coal alone we know that there was an overwhelming abundance of plant and animal life, especially in the arctic and Antarctic regions, during warm periods.

In contrast, cold periods, which maintained glaciers along the Kansas River through the summer, have brought death and restriction to plant and animal life. None of these wide swings in the Earth’s environment, including the extinction of more than 90 percent of Earth’s previous species, was caused by man.

Natural geothermal, heliothermal and biological (incorporation of hydrocarbons into fossil fuels) cycles are ecological giants. Entropy, the largest ecological giant of all, is systematically destroying the universe and will destroy all life by genetic meltdown long before our sun expires. Al Gore and his anthropocentric ilk have too exalted a view of man.

David Penny,

Lawrence