From: France 24, 1 November 2015 (h/t to The GWPF)
A popular weatherman announced Saturday evening he has been sacked by leading French news channel France Télévisions for publishing a book which accused top climate change experts of misleading the world about the threat of global warming.
Philippe Verdier, a household name in France for his daily weather reports on the France 2 channel, announced in an online video that he had received a letter of dismissal.
“My book ‘Climate Investigation’ was published one month ago. It got me banned from the air waves,” said the weatherman, who was put “on leave” from the TV station on October 12.
“I received this letter this morning and decided to open it in front of you because it concerns everybody- in the name of freedom of expression and freedom of information.”
His announcement comes four days after France Télévisions chief Delphine Ernotte told French MPs that Verdier had been summoned to a formal interview that could lead to his dismissal. An employee who picked up the phone at France Télévisions on Sunday morning told FRANCE 24 that there were no PRs present to confirm or deny Verdier’s dismissal.
‘Many positive consequences to global warming’
The controversy around Verdier’s claims has likely been heightened by their timing, with his book coming just weeks before the start of a much-anticipated UN climate change summit, known as COP21, to be held in Paris at the end of November.
“I put myself in the path of COP21, which is a bulldozer, and this is the result,” Verdier told RTL radio station in October.
He said he was inspired to write the book after France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius met with TV meteorologists and asked them to highlight climate change issues in their broadcasts.
“I was horrified by this speech,” Verdier told French magazine Les Inrockuptibles last month. In his book, Verdier accuses state-funded climate change scientists of having been “manipulated” and “politicised”, even accusing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of publishing deliberately misleading data.
He also argues that there are “a great many positive consequences to global warming”, such as lower consumption of fuel used for heating and fewer cold-related deaths in winter.
“I am being punished for exercising my freedom of expression,” the weatherman told RTL.
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Expect more of this. Neither the constitution of the EU nor the UN have a bill of rights which in the minds of bureaucrats trumps national constitutions in sticky situations.
Maybe they fired him for being one of those wild-eyed conspiracy theorists. He did say that there was a conspiracy to silence AGW critics. I mean, what other choice did they have, right?
Yes, obviously, they needed to fire him to try to silence him for daring to say that critics and skeptics are silenced.
It’s not the same to compare it to the dark ages. This is only about money.
You know the old saying – every cloud has a silver lining.
One consequence of this atrocity is that many millions of French people will, at the very least, become aware that there is another side to the story. Perhaps a few millions will start to inform themselves. Who knows where it could lead?
“They regarded protest merely as dissent to be suppressed, not as a serious challenge to their validity.” This policy “…left unanswered the cry for reform, ignored all protests, warnings and signs of rising revolt, and ended by breaking apart the unity of Christendom.” – Barbara Tuchman of the pre-reformation Roman Catholic Church in “The March of Folly.”
“From Seine’s cold quays to Ganges’ burning stream,
The mortal troupes dance onward in a dream;
They do not see, within the opened sky,
The Angel’s sinister trumpet raised on high.”
http://www.poetry-archive.com/b/the_dance_of_death.html
http://www.scmsa.eu/archives/SCM_Global_Warming_Summary_2015_09.pdf
Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
Apparently in France, “liberty, equality, fraternity” does not include the liberty to question dominant opinions. Equality does include equal rights of conscience and intellect. And fraternity ends when you question established dogma. Belief in man-caused global warming isn’t science: it’s a cult that demand unquestioning obedience, or you will be punished.
Tallbloke has a great post on Delphine Ernotte who fired Verdier
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2015/11/02/conflict-of-interest-over-verdier-delphine-ernotte-cunci-suez-environment/#more-23710
Conflict of interest…
The French TV channels are now on full climate mode. Every journal has a sequence about “climate” (climate is bad weather or the Atlantic eating the shore since at least WWII).
Last times French media were on full propaganda mode:
– when Jean-Marie Le Pen (extreme right candidate) reached the final vote of presidential election, all medias were anti-Le Pen; result: better score for Le Pen than the total of far right vote on the first vote, and better percentage.
– “Référendum sur le projet de Constitution européenne” : all journalists, all editorialists, all experts were for, the French rejected the project.
I can’t think of an example where such blitzcrieg propaganda worked (with a measured result in term of votes).
Does anyone know how and where Monsieur Verdier can be contacted re speaking at the Paris climate challenge? http://www.pcc15.org?
Who is attending this conference in Paris from the United States?
I would like to email them.
I was appalled to hear this news, and signed Jean-Pierre Bardinet’s petition to have Philippe Verdier reinstated. So far as I know that has not happened.
Just to add a personal note I, too, was fired from a government position in Canada, although they did not call it firing, but closing a position. Why? I declared from Bouguer gravity anomalies, total-field magnetic data, topographic configurations and geological mapping that a significant fault passes directly underneath the nuclear reactors at Pickering, Ontario, just east of Metro Toronto. To add to that the organization which “closed my position” was the nuclear regulatory body, the Atomic Energy Control Board, now known as the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. I never declared any opposition to nuclear power, and, in fact, support it, but as a geologist I saw a feature, and others as well, that needed to be investigated far more thoroughly than they ever had been. In other words I did the job that I thought a nuclear regulatory employee should do. I feel very badly for Philippe Verdier and hope to hell that he can get that job back, or get an even better one. My apologies to all for the rant.