Australia’s chief scientist has suggested Tony Abbott’s top business adviser should stick to economics rather than “trawl the internet” for papers questioning the overwhelming scientific opinion on global warming.

Maurice Newman, former chairman of the stock exchange and the ABC and now chairman of Abbott’s business advisory council, wrote an article in the Australian last week in which he warned that the world would be ill-prepared for global cooling, citing scientific papers predicting this would be the result of reduced solar activity.



Asked about the article, chief scientist Ian Chubb told Guardian Australia: “If 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.



“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 said.



In the article, Newman said that “like primitive civilisations offering up sacrifices to appease the gods, many governments, including Australia’s former Labor government, used the biased research to pursue “green gesture politics” and accused the “political establishment of being deaf” to evidence that global warming had “paused” and cooling was possible.



“Having put all our eggs in one basket and having made science a religion, it bravely persists with its global warming narrative, ignoring at its peril and ours, the clear warnings being given by Mother Nature,” he wrote.



Chubb suggested Newman stick to his areas of expertise.



Chubb said he was “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.”



Chubb’s response is not the first time the prime minister’s scientific adviser has taken issue with his business adviser’s views.



In February, Chubb said the scientific evidence for human-induced global warming was so overwhelming that those who reject it are usually forced to “impugn the messenger” with “stupid expressions like ‘groupthink’” or “silly” arguments that global warming is a “delusion”.



Newman was among those who had used the phrase “groupthink” in relation to the debate about climate science.

Tim Flannery, head of the climate council, said last week he was keen to meet Newman to discuss his understanding of climate science because the businessman appeared to have “little regard for science and facts”.

Newman told the Australian environmentalists were trying to subject him to a gulag-style “re-education campaign”.



Asked whether he had sought to speak to Newman, Chubb said: ”Neither of us has sought to speak to the other.”



But he said he had “spoken to members of the government about the basic fundamentals of climate change science … about how we can actually observe what is happening.”



As the Abbott government comes under fire for big cuts to science and research funding, and for not appointing a science minister, Chubb said he was establishing a new “science council” of business people, researchers and scientists to reset the way the government was advised on science policy.



It would replace the prime minister’s science, engineering and innovation council, which has not met since the Abbott government was elected almost a year ago, but met regularly under former governments.



“We are trying to say what is done is done and now we are trying to be strategic,” Chubb said.



He said he “could not complain” about his own access to government, having met the prime minister on two or three occasions as well as other ministers.



The claims made by Newman in his article have been fact checked by Guardian blogger Graham Readfern.

