The chairman of the Prime Minister's Business Advisory Council (BAC) has been slammed for the views he expressed in a recent article, which accused policy-makers of following biased research.

Writing for News Corp media outlet The Australian, the PM’s chief corporate advisor Maurice Newman said global warming was a “religion rather than science” and that anti-carbon legislation from the former Labor government was “like primitive civilisations offering sacrifices to appease the gods”.

Mr Newman said global warming was a result of solar activity, and that global cooling was the real problem.

He cited a total of seven scientists to conclude that the next challenge was global cooling.

Former chairman of the Coal Association Ian Dunlop says Newman’s comments are part of a push to ignore growing environmental issues.

“This has become an ideological issue because supposed conservatives don't want to believe that this is actually happening, because what it means is that we have to fundamentally change the way our business and economy operates,” Mr Dunlop told ABC reporters.

“The Government is in complete denial on this and unfortunately I believe that most of corporate Australia is in the same position.

“I would have expected that corporate leaders would be coming out and really making their voices heard, because this is the big issue that is going to affect the corporate world,” he said.

Australia’s chief scientist Ian Chubb said science could be fluid.

“f you trawl the internet on a regular enough basis you can come up with the sorts of things that article was saying, but you still need to explain why the huge, the overwhelming scientific evidence says the opposite,” Chubb told Guardian reporters.

“If you want to put up alternative theories you have to find some kind of credible evidence to support them … if you can’t do that you tend to resort to name-calling, calling global warming things like a religion or a cult or some kind of conspiracy.”

Chubb says he is “not an economist so I would be unwise to make a comment on the economy”.

“I try to speak where I have knowledge... almost everyone with knowledge would say Mr Newman’s comments are at odds with what they know, but people with no scientific knowledge persist in the view that they can find three or four papers from the hundreds and hundreds of papers on the subject and then dismiss the overwhelming bulk of evidence … it is a silly response to a very important issue,” he said.

Tim Flannery from the Australian Climate Council says it is a continuation of the refusal to discuss the evolving state of climate science.

“We have never had in this country a serious discussion on what climate change really means, it been dumbed down by both sides of politics,” he said.

“It is deeply concerning that someone who supposedly represents the business community is spouting such arrant nonsense.

“The link between business and government is far too important to be subject to rubbish like this.

“Here it is going to have to be business that leads ... it requires people at the top of the corporations to get off their backsides and start to take account of the risks that we face and the opportunities, in a genuinely objective way,” Flannery said.