Rabid climate change denier Sen. Ted Cruz, new chairman of the Senate subcommittee in charge of overseeing NASA, has told the space agency to focus on space exploration and not on "political distractions that are extraneous to NASA's mandate" such as climate change.

Cruz's chairmanship of the subcommittee is setting off a panic among environmental groups that are seriously concerned the Texas senator will do what he can to impede NASA research into climate change. Cruz has said his priority is to reinvigorate U.S. space exploration, which means NASA programs monitoring climate change will be placed on the back burner.

Like Us on Facebook

NASA, however, is a champion in the global fight against climate change and has 12 orbiting satellites monitoring the Earth for climate change and all aspects of the Earth system, including oceans, land, atmosphere, biosphere and cryosphere. It plans to launch several more Earth observation satellites in the next few years.

NASA is currently conducting a program it describes as "breakthrough research on climate science, enhancing the ability of the international scientific community to advance global integrated Earth system science using space-based observations".

"We have a climate denier who is in charge of a committee that has a heavy science mandate," said Melinda Pierce, legislative director of the Sierra Club, a U.S. environmental organization based in California.

"I fear for NASA's portfolio of climate science research."

Environmentalists' concerns about Cruz's well known opposition to climate change are being refueled by his statement that "We must refocus our investment on the hard sciences, on getting men and women into space, on exploring low-Earth orbit and beyond and not on political distractions that are extraneous to NASA's mandate".

And Cruz has renamed the science subcommittee to reflect what he sees is its new mission. The subcommittee is now called the "Subcommittee on Space and Science and Competitiveness" of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. Republicans added the word "Competitiveness" to the old name to emphasize their desire to boost the country's private space industry.

Republicans are also offended the International Space Station has been at the mercy of Russia and its fleet of supply spacecraft since the U.S. retired its space shuttle fleet in 2011.

"Russia's status as the current gatekeeper of the International Space Station could threaten our capability to explore and learn, stunting our capacity to reach new heights and share innovations with free people everywhere," Cruz said

Cruz has been a climate change denier since his election to the Senate in 2012. This apparently stems from his inability to understand the difference between climate and temperature.

"The last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming. Contrary to all the theories that-that they are expounding, there should have been warming over the last 15 years. It hasn't happened," Cruz said in 2014.

He considers climate change "a so-called scientific theory" and said data doesn't support climate change despite 97 percent of the world's climate scientists affirming it does.

Cruz's adamant denial of climate change mirrors that of Republicans in general. A report released by the Pew Research Center in May 2014 showed that only 14 percent of Republicans view global warming as a top priority. Only 24 percent of Republicans view human activity as the cause for global warming.