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Scientists who oppose the prevailing views on climate change have been shut out of debate on the Kyoto protocol, the Commons environment committee was told Thursday.

The result is that Canada may be wasting billions of dollars trying to curb emissions of carbon dioxide which is not a pollutant, said Charles Simpson, president of a Calgary-based group called Friends of Science.

“The Canadian government has refused to listen to our government's leading experts in the field,” said Mr. Simpson, a retired oil industry employee.

He was accompanied Carleton University geologist Tim Patterson, one of a handful of scientists across Canada who have become known as outspoken critics of the Kyoto protocol.

“It is the first time to my knowledge that an independent climate scientist has addressed a committee such as this,” Mr. Simpson said before introducing Dr. Patterson, whose specialty is paleoclimatology — the study of past climate.

Dr. Patterson said rising temperatures in the past century are due to natural changes in the energy of the sun, not to pollution.

He mocked the view that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. “It's plant food, it's a natural part of the atmosphere.”

Much of the science accepted when the Kyoto treaty was negotiated in 1997 has since been disproved, he added.

“If during the mid-1990s we knew what we knew today there would be no Kyoto protocol because it would have been considered unnecessary.”

Environment Canada scientist Henry Hengeveld said Patterson is commenting on matters outside his field.

“That's like a dermatologist commenting on the diagnosis of a neurologist. I think this is an example of someone outside his field of expertise, not having read all the literature out there ... and really being out of his depth.”