Philippe Verdier of state-owned channel France 2 was taken off air in October for his book attacking ‘complete hype on the climate’

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

A weather forecaster for French state television has been fired after releasing and promoting a book criticising politicians, scientists and others for what he calls an exaggerated view of climate change.

Philippe Verdier’s dismissal from France 2 comes a month before Paris hosts a UN conference aiming for the most ambitious worldwide agreement yet to limit global warming. He announced his dismissal in an online video over the weekend in which he described it as an attack on media freedom.

French weatherman taken off air after questioning climate change Read more

France Televisions, which owns France 2, would not comment on Monday. French media reported that the network said Verdier had violated ethical rules. Many media organisations have guidelines about journalists publicly expressing personal opinions on subjects they cover.

Verdier was initially suspended a month ago, after his book, Climat Investigation (Climate Investigation), came out and he sent an open letter to François Hollande, the French president, saying the climate conference “won’t solve anything”.

In an online video he released at the time, Verdier criticises the “complete hype on the climate” by scientists, politicians, business lobbies and environmental and religious groups. “You are dramatising things to underline your will to gather the world’s powerful and defuse a pending cataclysm,” he wrote to Hollande.

Verdier questioned the president’s sincerity in promising to help the environment and asks him to plant a tree in the Élysée Palace to prove his “green” credentials.

The conference from 30 November to 11 December is based on the results of more than 100 years of climate science, and top officials from 196 countries, including President Barack Obama, will arrive in Paris to talk about ways to slow climate change.

Most climate scientists agree that the planet’s climate is changing largely because of human action. Though some public officials and a few climate scientists disagree, the world’s scientific organisations say changes such as increasingly extreme weather and rising sea levels are a result of the buildup of heat-trapping gases, especially carbon dioxide, from the burning of coal, oil and gas.

Some weather forecasters in the US have faced similar issues. Donald Wuebbles, a climate scientist at the University of Illinois, notes the difference between television weather forecasters who look at daily weather and scientists who study long-term change over periods of at least 20 to 30 years. Often television weathermen do not study the long-term effects and statistics.

Wuebbles said on Monday that Verdier’s claims that temperatures have levelled out are contradicted by data. Wuebbles added that temperatures may go up and down from year to year but that the overall long-term trend was upward.