Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). (AP)

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who grew up in a scientific household – both of his parents are mathematicians – said a recent exchange he had with the president of the Sierra Club further affirmed that “climate change is not science" but is "religion,” and he added that climate change disciples use the “language” of religion, regardless of scientific facts, to push their doctrine.

“Just a couple weeks ago in the Senate I chaired a hearing where the president of the Sierra Club testified,” said Senator Cruz in an Oct. 28 interview on The Blaze TV. “We had an exchange, where I simply asked him about the data.”

Aaron Mair is president of the Sierra Club.

“He [Mair] simply couldn’t answer the most basic question, starting with the fact -- he couldn’t answer the most basic fact that for the last 18 years the satellite data show no significant warming whatsoever,” said Cruz.

“He had no idea about that,” said Cruz. “He turned to his aides every minute or two.”

“You know, part of the reason he didn’t know the facts?” said Cruz. “Because climate change is not science -- it’s religion.”

“Look at the language where they call you a denier,” said the senator. “Denier is not the language of science.”

Look, I’m the child of two scientists,” he said. “My parents are both mathematicians, computer programmers. My dad was a self-taught geophysicist. The essence of the scientific method is to start with a hypothesis and then look to evidence to disprove the hypothesis. You’re not trying to prove it. You’re trying to disprove it.”

“Any good scientist is a skeptic,” said the senator. “If he’s not, he or she should not be a scientist. But yet the language of the global warming alarmists, ‘denier’ is the language of religion. It’s heretic. You are a blasphemer.”

Cruz continued, “The response from the Sierra Club: ‘We have decreed this is the answer, you must accept it.’ And so he didn’t know his facts because he just knew his religion.”

Aaron Mair, president of the Sierra Club. (YouTube screenshot)

According to Dr. John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama, the Earth’s temperature has “plateaued,” and there has been no global warming over the last 18 years.

“That’s basically a fact. There’s not much to comment on,” Christy told CNSNews.com last fall when his data were released. Christy and other scientists compiled their data from actual raw temperatures collected from 14 instruments on various weather satellites.

"I predicted this in 1999," Dr. Don Easterbrook, a climate scientist and glacier expert from Washington State, said of the 18-year period with no global warming. "My prediction has now happened."

"The same year the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) models were predicting that the Earth would warm by one degree per decade, I was predicting that the Earth would cool for the next three decades," he noted. "They were way off the mark, while my prediction is still on target."