NPR posted:

INSKEEP: Let's go on to the other subject very briefly here. We've used so much time, I don't want to use more than a couple of minutes here. But you're on your way, as we're talking, to a hearing on climate change.

CRUZ: Yes.

INSKEEP: "Data or dogma" is part of the question you pose in the name of the hearing. What do you think about what is seen as a broad scientific consensus that there is man-caused climate change?

CRUZ: Well, I believe that public policy should follow the science and follow the data.

I am the son of two mathematicians and computer programmers and scientists. In the debate over global warming, far too often, politicians in Washington, and for that matter a number of scientists receiving large government grants, disregard the science and data and instead push political ideology.

And — and let's step back for a minute. You and I are both old enough to remember 30, 40 years ago, when at the time we were being told by liberal politicians and some scientists that the problem was global cooling —

INSKEEP: There was a moment when some people said that.

CRUZ: — that we were facing the threat —

INSKEEP: But the raw scientific consensus has been building for decades.

CRUZ: — that we were facing the threat of an incoming ice age, and their solution to this problem is that we needed massive government control of the economy, the energy sector and every aspect of our lives. But then, as you noted, the data didn't back that up. What they were saying was disproven by the evidence. The Earth was not cooling.

So then many of those same liberal politicians and a number of those same scientists switched their theory to global warming. You know, I joked yesterday that, that the graphs they had with the temperatures going down, I think maybe they just turned them upside down and used the very same graphs. And so that became their theory, that, that, that global warming was the problem.

INSKEEP: This is a conspiracy, then, in your view.

CRUZ: No. This is — this is liberal politicians who want government power, and they will accept any excuses. Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama's chief of staff, said you never want to waste a good crisis. So their theory became global warming, and their solution, interestingly enough, was the identical solution they'd advocated before. It was massive government control over the economy, the energy sector and every aspect of our lives. Now —

INSKEEP: And almost all the countries in the world have joined into this approach?

CRUZ: So, so let me ask you a question, Steve. Is there global warming, yes or no?

INSKEEP: According to the scientists —

CRUZ: I'm asking you.

INSKEEP: — absolutely. Sure.

CRUZ: OK. You are incorrect, actually. The scientists don't say there's global warming