Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz laid down a marker Tuesday on global warming, saying that denying human activity is heating the planet makes him a renegade truth-teller in the mold of the Renaissance astronomer Galileo Galilei. Climate activists, he said in a half-hour videotaped interview, 'brand you a heretic' if you disagree with them. 'Today the global warming alarmists are the equivalent of the flat-Earthers,' he told the Texas Tribune. 'It used to be: "It is accepted scientific wisdom the Earth is flat." And this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier,' Cruz said. SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEOS . Texas Tribune political reporter Jay Root's one-on-one interview in New York City with U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas' junior senator and the nation's first declared 2016 presidential candidate, included a series of jabs about global warming . 'DENIERS': Ted Cruz says his dissent about climate change is like the 17th century astronomer Galileo's refusal to believe the Sun revolved around the Earth . The comments will likely stoke the U.S. environmental movement's opposition to a Cruz presidency – which was likely to be present anyway if he should become the GOP's 2016 nominee. 'It's not like Friends of the Earth was going to endorse him, and now suddenly they're not,' an Iowa Republican political consultant told Daily Mail Online, describing Cruz as 'a smart guy whose new pronouncements will cost him nothing.' Americans, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday, ranked climate change at the bottom of a list of six environmental concerns, with those saying they care a 'great deal' falling by 2 percentage points since last year. 'Even as global warming has received greater attention as an environmental problem from politicians and the media in recent years,' pollsters wrote, 'Americans' worry about it is no higher now than when Gallup first asked about it in 1989.' And then there's Galileo: The story goes that he aroused the ire of Rome by contradicting Catholic Church teaching at the time, which held that the Sun revolved around the Earth. He was forced under pain of death in 1633 to recant his claim that the Earth revolved around the Sun, but calmly said after his release from a dungeon: 'Eppur si muove' – Italian for, 'And yet it still moves.' Cruz's 'flat-Earther' epithet is likely misplaced, since Galileo never staked his career on a claim that the Earth itself was round. That was well-known by the time he was an influential scientist. But the Texas senator's Galileo analogy is a direct slap at environmentalists, calculated to set him apart from more moderate Republicans expected to enter the presidential race soon. Cruz can fire up his base and raise money quickly, the Iowa consultant said, by 'casting himself as a swashbuckling crusader' against the economic impacts of limits on carbon emissions. 'You know, we shouldn't be causing millions of hard-working men and women to have their energy bills go through the roof,' Cruz said Tuesday, talking about what he sees as the result of government climate policy. 'It causes real harm and suffering when people all across this country lose jobs because the federal government wants to take control of aspects of our lives. ... That's not something we should do lightly,' he said. Cruz's wide-ranging interview touched on Obamacare, gay marriage, marijuana policy and his disdain for 'one-size-fits-all' legislative approaches often crafted in Washington, D.C. But it's his position on carbon emissions and the fate of the planet that will likely raise the temperature of his opponents on the left. 'I am the child of two mathematicians and scientists. I believe in following evidence and data,' Cruz said. 'And the global warming alarmists, anyone who actually points to the evidence that disproves their apocalyptical claims, they don't engage in reasoned debate. What do they do? They scream, "You're a denier".' CLIMATE TYCOON: 'Al Gore has made millions of dollars off of global warming,' Cruz said . GLOBAL COOLING? Bostonians would be hard pressed to fret about rising temperatures following one of the snowiest winters on record this year . As evidence, he pointed to data from heat-sensing weather satellites. 'The satellite data demonstrate that there has been no significant warming whatsoever for 17 years,' he emphasized. 'Now that's a real problem for the global warming alarmists. Because all those computer models on which this whole issue is based predicted significant warming, and yet the satellite data show it ain't happening.' He also said the federal government itself is perpetuating a money-mill premised on a scientifically bankrupt ideology. 'There are an awful lot of people making a whole lot of money,' he said. 'Al Gore has made millions of dollars off of global warming. And a lot of these scientists who are most vocal about it are receiving massive grants on this theory that the data are not backing up.' A Washington Post blogger hammered Cruz on Wednesday, calling his comments 'just baffling.' 'Scientists that studied the satellite data to which Cruz refers,' Post writer Philip Bump wrote, 'reject the idea that it somehow disproves the idea that human activity is making the world warmer.' 'Cruz's comments, from start to finish, are simply not correct,' Bump claimed. Adding insult to insult, the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board wrote Wednesday that Cruz's campaign was 'off and bumbling,' castigating him for 'positioning himself against an overwhelming consensus among the world’s preeminent climate scientists.' That followed a Sunday interview on the NBC program 'Meet the Press' where California Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown said Cruz's position on global warming makes him 'absolutely unfit to be running for office.' But the senator isn't backing down. 'EPPUR SI MUOVE': Galileo was forced under pain of death to recant his claim that the Earth revolved around the Sun, but when he was let out of prison he still insisted: 'And yet it still moves' 'I read this morning a Newsweek article from the 1970s talking about "global cooling",' he told the Texas Tribune. 'And it said the science is clear, it is overwhelming, we are in a major cooling period, and it's going to cause enormous problems worldwide. ... Now, the data proved to be not backing up that theory.' Then, he recalled, 'advocates of global cooling suddenly shifted to global warming.' And later, he said, the terminology changed again to 'climate change.' At each stage, Cruz claimed, green activists promoted central authority over the nation's energy economy as a solution. 'When someone keeps proposing the same solution regardless of the problem, you start to think maybe they just like government control of the energy sector and every aspect of our lives,' he jabbed. Cruz's home state of Texas is famed for its oil and gas wells, and for its Gulf coast refineries. His position is most typically backed by politicians who represent Americans in other energy-rich states like coal-wealthy West Virginia and oil-heavy Alaska. A Cruz spokeswoman did not respond to a request for clarification about how he resembles Galileo.
In Texas interview, he says it was once 'accepted scientific wisdom the Earth is flat, and this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier'
Claims 50-year swing from 'global cooling' to 'global warming' and then to 'climate change' shows liberals just want to control the US economy . 'The satellite data demonstrate that there has been no significant warming whatsoever for 17 years'
The Washington Post branded Cruz's comments 'just baffling' and said lengthy 'warming hiatus' doesn't change global warming reality . New Gallup poll finds Americans rank climate change at the bottom of a list of six environmental concerns .