Right-wing extremist Matt Kokkonen unloaded another tiresome tirade about Al Gore’s fight against global warming (“Gore is cashing in,” Feb. 18). Which public office is Kokkonen running for this year? In his criticism of Gore, he tells us that to win over the voters, “first you create a crisis, then you scare the masses, then you promote yourself as the only savior—for a fee, of course.” Indeed, that does sound ominous. It’s exactly what Sarah Palin is doing. But I digress. 

As Kokkonen wrote, the climate crisis was created by Al Gore.  Earth is experiencing extreme climate patterns: prolonged droughts, record temperatures, warming seas, rapidly melting polar ice caps and glaciers. According to Kokkonen, these events cannot possibly be due to such human activities as coal fired power plants, massive deforestation in Africa and South America, thousands upon thousands of methane-emitting garbage dumps, and hundreds of millions of vehicles spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. No, these global changes in Earth’s climate can only be explained as random acts of God. And thus, Kokkonen leads us to the inescapable conclusion that Al Gore is God.  Who knew?  

 Bill Patzert holds doctorate degrees in oceanography and meteorology and works at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Patzert recently wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “The problems we have now—the deficit and war and poverty—will be dwarfed by climate change, sea-level rise, a warming world, change in agricultural and rainfall patterns.” Such scientists as Patzert have more credibility than such political hacks as Matt Kokkonen.