Ted Cruz Climate Change Comments Make Him 'Unfit' For Presidency

(CBS Local/AP) -- It's no surprise that the Republican Party and many right wing conservatives have questioned the accuracy and validity of climate change, calling the phenomenon nothing short of fiction.

Future 2016 presidential hopeful Ted Cruz's position is no different.

Cruz, who recently announced his 2016 campaign for president, says that for the past 17 years satellite images show that "there's been zero global warming."

This is true based on a simple technicality: satellite data.

Scientific experts say satellite data is the wrong way to measure global warming, which the vast majority of scientists say is happening and is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Temperatures at ground level show that the planet has warmed since 1998 and that 2014 was the hottest on record.

RELATED: Cruz: 'I Believe In The Power Of Millions Of Courageous Conservatives'

A few months ago Cruz, the current overseer of NASA, also suggested climate change could be an arbitrary concept.

"You know, back in the '70s - I remember the '70s, we were told there was global cooling," Cruz stated. "And everyone was told global cooling was a really big problem. And then that faded. And then we were told by Al Gore and others there was global warming and that was going to be a big problem. And then it morphed. It wasn't global warming anymore, it became climate change. And the problem with climate change is there's never been a day in the history of the world in which the climate is not changing,"

Even more recently, Cruz told Seth Myers of "Late Night" that science and the amount of snow that's accumulated in New Hampshire, where he'd just visited, weakened the arguments and dismal predictions of climate change scientists.

Thoughts and quotes such as these have caused many to question his ability to run this country, especially after the Obama administration's strong push for more climate-conscious legislation.

RELATED: Ted Cruz Leads Presidential Pack in Use of Social Media To Announce Candidacy

California Gov. Jerry Brown,76, says U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz' views on climate change make the Texas Republican unfit to run for president.

Cruz "betokens such a level of ignorance and a direct falsification of existing scientific data, it's shocking, and I think that man has rendered himself absolutely unfit to be running for office," Brown said.

Brown made the remarks during an interview that aired on "Meet the Press" on Sunday.

Brown said he thinks candidates from both parties will need to talk about climate change as well as how they plan to fund repairs to the nation's aging infrastructure and their views on using federal dollars to support scientific and technology research.

Of course, with Cruz being the head of NASA some amount of research and logic must be used to back up his statements. In regards to this, Cruz has acknowledged that climate change is real — he just does not attribute it to human activity.

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