A Utah Senate committee endorsed a resolution Friday asking federal regulators to throttle back on greenhouse-gas controls until climate change is proven.

In a 4-2 vote over the objections of critics -- including former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson and a large contingent of university students -- the Senate Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Committee approved Rep. Kerry Gibson's nonbinding measure.

It calls on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to freeze efforts to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions until completion of "a full and independent investigation" of climate-change science.

The resolution -- which previously cleared the House 56-17 after lawmakers stripped language calling climate change data a "conspiracy" -- now goes to the full Senate.

Anderson spoke out against the measure, calling climate change the "greatest moral issue facing humankind today."

Scientists from Brigham Young University and the University of Utah also opposed the resolution.

Barry Bickmore, a geology professor at BYU, agreed with Gibson that the EPA should not be responsible for regulating CO2. But he said committee members were relying on poor science to get the result they wanted.

"The quality of the arguments matter," Bickmore said.

Gibson took on a kind of elitism by scientists ringing alarms over climate change.

"All of you know that I don't have a lot of letters behind my name," the Ogden Republican said. "I live and operate a six-generation dairy and crop farm in western Weber County. To some people, that disqualifies me from entering into an issue like this. To me, I think it gives me all of the knowledge I need."

Several dozen Utah college students gathered at the Capitol on Friday to oppose the resolution, many of them from a group, organized on Facebook that claims more than 2,100 members.

Jillian Edmunds, a student at Westminster College, compared scientists who doubt man-made climate change to historians who don't believe in the Holocaust, while University of Utah student Derek Snarr, blasted the committee for ignoring experts.

Both Snarr and Edmunds warned that decisions made by the Legislature now would have an impact on later generations.

"What we're saying here, as future generations, is ... 'are you willing to sit here, do nothing except the status quo, and force us to face the consequences?' " Edmunds asked.

Sen. Allen Christensen, R-North Ogden, applauded the students' "passion," but suggested they may change their minds in the next few years. Sen. Dennis Stowell, R-Parowan, said that students who were serious about the issue would be willing to cut college funding to pay for it.