TV meteorologist Karl Spring’s characterization of former Vice President Al Gore as a “left-wing nut” has taken on a life of its own in the blogosphere.
Spring, chief meteorologist at KBJR-TV, Channel 6 — the Northland’s News Center — made the comment on a local radio show the day Gore’s co-selection for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was announced.
Once a year, KUWS News Director Mike Simonson invites a panel of meteorologists on his weekly show “Final Edition” to talk about what the year’s weather might bring. This year’s conversation, on Oct. 12, grew unusually spirited when the topic turned to the Nobel Committee’s announcement about Al Gore and the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Spring: Referred to Gore as a "left-wing nut" on a KUWS program [PHOTO FROM KBJR.COM]
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Simonson’s guests began debating not so much whether global warming is real but about the science portrayed in Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.”
“This debate is being driven a lot by politicians,” not by scientists, said Kyle Underwood, meteorologist with WDIO/WIRT, Channels 10/13.
Spring then dropped the “left-wing nut” comment and said that, although he hadn’t seen the movie, he believes Gore “takes facts and extrapolates them to such extremes” that they don’t make any sense, and project “a doomsday scenario.”
“He used this movie for a political agenda,” Spring said.
After Simonson sent a segment of the program to the Wisconsin Public Radio station in Madison, from which it was broadcast across the state, he started getting complaints.
Simonson said his station has received about a dozen calls and e-mails about the conversation, “and that’s a lot, for us,” he said.
Blogged discussions about the radio show have blossomed on the Minnesota Monitor Web site, a left-leaning political blog, and on the local Web site
www.perfectduluthday.com. Reactions mostly center on Spring’s “left-wing nut” comment.
Spring said on Simonson’s show that Gore exaggerates the impact of global warming.
Later in the program, Carol Christenson of the National Weather Service and KQDS FOX-21 forecaster Todd Nelson added their views. The News Tribune and Fox-21 have a news-sharing partnership.
“Whether you like Al Gore and his politics or not, he probably has skewed a lot of the statistics quite a bit, but maybe that’s a good thing to get people to act,” Christenson said.
Nelson said Gore’s movie is important. “Before the movie, people were kind of talking about it, but now that the movie is out there in the mainstream media, people are talking about it every single day.”
“It was a little sharp,” Simonson said of Spring’s comments. “But to me, he has a right to say it. It represents what part of the population has to say about Al Gore.”
On Thursday, Spring declined comment, saying he was too busy monitoring active weather systems. Station manager Dave Jensch could not be reached for comment.
Spring joined KBJR-TV as chief meteorologist in March 2006. He graduated from Augsburg College in Minneapolis and earned his American Meteorological Society and National Weather Association television seals of approval.
But perhaps the influence of “An Inconvenient Truth” and the conversations it’s spurred about global warming have had an impact already, Simonson said.
“Two years ago when I did this show, not everyone agreed that global warming existed,” he said.
