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VICE News is closely tracking global environmental change. Check out the Tipping Point blog here.Texas Senator Ted Cruz declared on "Late Night with Seth Meyers" that science doesn't support the "alarmists on global warming."Cruz extinguished any hope that a recent comment, "the whole world's on fire" — which he told a three-year-old while speaking Sunday in New Hampshire — had a basis in climate science.Host Seth Meyers took the opportunity to mock Cruz's climate change denial."First, I got excited, because I thought maybe you were coming around on global warming, but that's not the case, right?" Meyers said. "Because I think the world's on fire, literally — hottest year on record — but you're not there, right?"No, Cruz isn't."Satellite data demonstrate for the last 17 years there's been zero warming — none whatsoever. It's why, remember how it used to be called global warming? And then magically the theory changed to climate change?," Cruz said. "The reason is, it wasn't warming, but the computer models still say it is, except the satellites show it's not."2014 was the hottest year on record. Nine of the ten hottest years have occurred in the last decade. And each of the last three decades has been hotter than the one before.The episode on the Seth Meyers show wasn't the only time in the past week Cruz made public his rejection of the scientific consensus.Last Thursday, he debated the purpose of NASA with the agency's chief, Charles Bolden, during a Senate subcommittee hearing, telling him to focus on exploring space because "that's what inspires little boys and little girls across this country."Cruz added that he was concerned "NASA has lost its full focus on that core mission" and was spending too much time and resources on researching the Earth's atmosphere.In a lengthy — and at times testy — response, Bolden said that the agency won't be able to explore space "if the Kennedy Space Center goes underwater and we don't know it.""It is critical that we understand the Earth's environment because this is the only place we have to live," Bolden said.Related: Stop talking about climate change, House Republicans tell the Pentagon and CIA
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