Ted Cruz will oversee science subcommittee

What’s the future of space and science funding in the United States?

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, will help shape it after being named the chair of the Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness, which oversees overall science and NASA funding.

And that may be bad news for NASA — and scientific research altogether — considering Cruz has previously tried to slash NASA funding, even though in 2013, he said “it’s critical that the United States ensure its continued leadership in space.”

Cruz also has some very specific views on climate change.

“Contrary to all the theories that — that they are expounding, there should have been warming over the last 15 years,” Cruz said, according to CNN. “It hasn’t happened.”

He’s also called climate change a “so-called scientific theory.”

“You always have to be worried about something that is considered a so-called scientific theory that fits every scenario,” Cruz once said, according to CNN. “Climate change, as they have defined it, can never be disproved, because whether it gets hotter or whether it gets colder, whatever happens, they’ll say, well, it’s changing, so it proves our theory.”

He says it’s the same as “global cooling.”

“You know, back in the ’70s — I remember the ’70s, we were told there was global cooling,” Cruz said in February. “And everyone was told global cooling was a really big problem. And then that faded.”

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, who also has denied climate change is a real thing, will chair the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and the Coast Guard.