The Israeli public broadcaster has come under fire from angry listeners after broadcasting an interview with Tony Abbott in which he said the world was “in the grip of a climate cult”.

During the interview, recorded on 15 December while his home state of New South Wales was fighting terrifying bushfires, Abbott denied that carbon dioxide was driving global warming. The interview was broadcast on New Year’s Eve in a special show reviewing key international issues of the decade.

Abbott said: “While we still seem to be in the grip of a climate cult, the climate cult is going to produce policy outcomes that will cause people to wake up to themselves.”

After claiming, incorrectly, that a focus on emissions reduction in Australia had caused blackouts and rising power prices, Abbott said: “Sooner or later, in the end, people get hit over the head by reality.”

The host of the show, Israel Public Broadcasting Corporation foreign editor Eran Mor-Cicurel, interjected part-way through the interview, pointing out Australia had been hit by fires and disasters “happening again and again”.

Quick guide Climate change and bushfires Show Hide Does climate change cause bushfires? The link between rising greenhouse gas emissions and increased bushfire risk is complex but, according to major science agencies, clear. Climate change does not create bushfires, but it can and does make them worse. A number of factors contribute to bushfire risk, including temperature, fuel load, dryness, wind speed and humidity. What is the evidence on rising temperatures? The Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO say Australia has warmed by 1C since 1910 and temperatures will increase in the future. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says it is extremely likely increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases since the mid-20th century is the main reason it is getting hotter. The Bushfire and Natural Hazards research centre says the variability of normal events sits on top of that. Warmer weather increases the number of days each year on which there is high or extreme bushfire risk. What other effects do carbon emissions have? Dry fuel load - the amount of forest and scrub available to burn - has been linked to rising emissions. Under the right conditions, carbon dioxide acts as a kind of fertiliser that increases plant growth. So is climate change making everything dryer? Dryness is more complicated. Complex computer models have not found a consistent climate change signal linked to rising CO2 in the decline in rain that has produced the current eastern Australian drought. But higher temperatures accelerate evaporation. They also extend the growing season for vegetation in many regions, leading to greater transpiration (the process by which water is drawn from the soil and evaporated from plant leaves and flowers). The result is that soils, vegetation and the air may be drier than they would have been with the same amount of rainfall in the past. What do recent weather patterns show? The year coming into the 2019-20 summer has been unusually warm and dry for large parts of Australia. Above average temperatures now occur most years and 2019 has been the fifth driest start to the year on record, and the driest since 1970. Is arson a factor in this year's extreme bushfires? Not a significant one. Two pieces of disinformation, that an “arson emergency”, rather than climate change, is behind the bushfires, and that “greenies” are preventing firefighters from reducing fuel loads in the Australian bush have spread across social media. They have found their way into major news outlets, the mouths of government MPs, and across the globe to Donald Trump Jr and prominent right-wing conspiracy theorists. NSW’s Rural Fire Service has said the major cause of ignition during the crisis has been dry lightning. Victoria police say they do not believe arson had a role in any of the destructive fires this summer. The RFS has also contradicted claims that environmentalists have been holding up hazard reduction work. Photograph: Regi Varghese/AAP

Mor-Cicurel asked Abbott if he was “denying that fact we are in the process of global warming and global change”.

Abbott responded that while there was “no doubt that climate has changed”, previous warming events had happened before the industrial revolution.

Abbott’s points are contradicted by every major science academy in the world, as well as the expertise of government science agencies in his own country.

His anti-science views on climate change are well known in Australia and have been corrected many times by leading climate scientists but Mor-Cicurel was not aware of his views before the interview.

Mor-Cicurel told Guardian Australia the radio network had been reporting regularly on Australia’s bushfire crisis and was not aware of Abbott’s views before the interview.

He said: “Personally I was surprised [by Abbott’s views on climate change]. I did not expect a former prime minister of Australia to be so blunt about environmental issues in the middle of an environmental crisis in Australia.

“When we put it to air, people were terribly angry at us for airing such extremist views, especially from environmental organisations that were annoyed that we had given the stage to these kinds of views.”

Eran Cicurel (@EranCicurel) Well, Israel is a small country with big problems. However it has a large and vocal environmental movement. They were outraged. Some have blamed us for spreading lies as they failed to differentiate between the broadcaster and the interviewee.

Abbott said changes to climate in the past “makes me think as a matter of simple logic that carbon dioxide emissions, particularly human carbon dioxide, are not the only, or even the main factor here”.

He said that “all things being equal of course we should try and reduce our carbon dioxide emissions”.

But, he said: “The last thing we should do is drive our industries offshore and be putting pressure on household budgets and risk third world-style blackouts all in the name of climate change. We have got to be sensible and balanced and proportionate about these things and I don’t think other policy makers are right now.”

Australia’s bushfire season began in August, much earlier than usual, and has claimed at least 19 lives, destroyed more than 1,600 homes and burned at least 4.6m hectares of land – an area more than double the size of Israel.

Earlier in the interview, Abbott named three key themes for the globe over the past decade: the “challenge of China”, the “climate cult” and the “ongoing Islamist challenge”.

He said: “I think the western world has continued to suffer from serious self-doubt over the last decade and it’s exacerbated by the rise of what are effectively new religions like the climate cult and there is an ongoing Islamist challenge … and it’s been obvious since September 2001.”

Abbott was prime minister from September 2013 to 2015. He lost his Sydney seat of Warringah at the 2019 general election.