Cruz Says Scientific Data, Predictions Don’t Support Climate Change

Global warming is not supported by data, and predictions by scientists about the effects of climate change aren’t coming true, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Tuesday at a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation subcommittee hearing.

“Here are the inconvenient facts about the polar ice caps: The Arctic is not ice-free,” said the GOP presidential candidate, who is chairman of the Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness. “Facts matter, science matters, data matters. That’s what this hearing is about.”

The hearing, titled “Data or Dogma? Promoting Open Inquiry in the Debate over the Magnitude of Human Impact on Earth’s Climate,” featured a panel of five witnesses to discuss how “political pressure can suppress opposing viewpoints in the field of climate science.”

The panel consisted of John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville; Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology; William Happer, a physics professor at Princeton University; David Titley, professor of practice in the meteorology department at Pennsylvania State University; and author Mark Steyn.

Cruz said he also invited Sierra Club President Aaron Mair, but that Mair declined the invitation.

Much of the hearing focused on predictions by scientists that Cruz said have not come to fruition. In doing so, he singled out Secretary of State John Kerry, who as a Massachusetts senator in 2009 wrote that scientists predict the Arctic will be ice-free by the summer of 2013.

“2013 has come and gone,” Cruz said. “And John Kerry was not just a little bit, he was wildly, extraordinarily, entirely wrong.”

Democratic Sens. Edward Markey (Mass), Gary Peters (Mich.), Bill Nelson (Fla.), Tom Udall (N.M.) and Brian Schatz (Hawaii) attended the hearing after holding a press conference earlier in the day to criticize the premise of the hearing and the views of the panelists.

“The only thing worse than continuing to deny climate change would be to lift the oil export ban. Act on Climate,” Markety tweeted.

Sens. Udall, Schatz and Markey attended the U.N. climate conference in Paris over the weekend. Kerry is there now.