A Church of England bishop has been criticised after he compared climate change sceptics to the Austrian child abuser Josef Fritzl.

The Bishop of Stafford, the Right Reverend Gordon Mursell, said it was hard to imagine a more disgusting crime than Fritzl's, who sealed his daughter in a cellar for 24 years.

But Dr Mursell added: 'You could argue that, by our refusal to face the truth about climate change, we are as guilty as he is.

Monika Fritzl was born in the cellar where Josef Fritzl imprisoned his daughter

'We are in effect locking our children and grandchildren into a world with no future and throwing away the key.'

His comments, which were made in a pastoral letter addressed to churchgoers, have been widely attacked.

One critic accused the Church of England of elevating global warming to be a new religion.

Fritzl, a 73-year-old electrical engineer from Amstetten in Austria, was arrested in April after imprisoning his daughter Elisabeth in a cellar under his home for 24 years.

During that time, she bore seven children from his repeated rapes. Three of the children  -  the oldest 19  -  were never allowed out of the underground chamber.

Dr Mursell, 59, a suffragan or junior bishop in the Lichfield diocese, yesterday told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'I don't wish to shock people unnecessarily and I am in no way trying to imply that people who ignore climate change are child abusers  -  of course not.

Dr Gordon Mursell: Denied calling sceptics child abusers

'I am simply trying to use an analogy to get people to wake up to the consequences of what we are failing to do, because if we don't there won't be a future for our children either.

'The problem with climate change is  -  as I heard Prince Charles arguing very eloquently a couple of weeks ago  -  that it is terribly hard to get people to see the seriousness of it because the consequences are not faced just by the person failing to take action now.

'I think we have to try to find ways to get people to see the consequences of our failure to act on climate change.

'Could you not argue that if there is no future for our children and grandchildren, we will have been guilty of committing the most appalling crimes as well?'

But Professor Frank Furedi, head of the sociology department at Kent University, accused Dr Mursell of demonising those who do not agree with the fashionable wisdom on climate change

He told the online magazine Spiked: 'Focusing on the current anxieties about the future of the planet is a fruitful way of rediscovering Satan.

'Demonologists in pre-modern times argued that scepticism about witchcraft was a form of heresy that had to be punished.

'Now, scepticism towards the received wisdom on global warming, or on public health issues such as Aids, is described as "denial".

'Denial has been transformed into a generic evil.

'History shows that crusades against heretics and demons have a nasty habit of disorienting society and undermining civilised and humanist behaviour.'

Jill Kirby, director of the centreright think-tank, Centre for Policy Studies, which has published papers by scientists sceptical of climate change, said: 'Climate change has achieved the status of an alternative religion.

'It is a shame to see the CoE putting so much faith into an idea over which there is no agreement among scientists.'

Dr Mursell is not the first CoE prelate to link climate change and evil.

Two years ago, the Bishop of London, Dr Richard Chartres, claimed it was sinful for people to ignore any actions that contributed to climate change.