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Republican presidential candidate US senator Ted Cruz answers questions from reporters as he walks to the Senate floor on Thursday. Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Ted Cruz officially kicked off the long US presidential campaign when he declared his candidacy this week, but his anti-environmental rhetoric has already set the stage for a looming war over whether climate-change denial is a legitimate barrier to the most powerful job in the world.

Leading scientists are preparing for an American election in which global warming may receive much higher billing than before and Republicans statements will be exposed to a level of scrutiny they have not formally had to deal with.

Cruz, the red-meat Texas senator with an army of conservative followers, raised eyebrows on Tuesday when he told the Texas Tribune that people who believe global warming is real are the equivalent of the flat-Earthers.

It used to be it is accepted scientific wisdom the Earth is flat, and this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier, Cruz said.

The comments were emblematic of the environmental threat that has plagued the Republican party for years. Buoyed by the oil and gas companies and fossil-fuel-funder mega-donors that increasingly bankroll their campaigns, most prominent Republican politicians have either denied that climate change exists or refused to stake out a clear position, citing their personal lack of scientific knowledge.

But as the subjects specter looms larger by the day, and as presumed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has stepped up her calls on the need to battle climate change as a potential signature issue, the Im not a scientist line is infuriating scientists.

I think, frankly, the Republican party is going to have to make a decision, Michael Mann, director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center, who contributed to a Nobel Prize-winning landmark report on global warming, told the Guardian. Are they going to move in the direction of logic and rationality, or are they going to continue to pursue this anti-scientific fringe movement within their party that is personified by people liked Ted Cruz?

As long as the Koch brothers are pouring tens of millions of dollars into their campaigns, Mann said, referring to the top conservative donors, theres going to be enough oxygen to keep these folks going.

The real test, Mann said, lies with establishment-backed candidates like former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who recently declared himself a climate skeptic despite his previous assertion that the climate may be warming.

Originally posted here:
Ted Cruz embodies Republican climate change dilemma