No, you didn't understand what I said. Opposing people with extreme views on climate change is not climate change denial. If you had somewhere he said climate change isn't real, you'd have posted that. Instead, you posted him condemning people who act like an irrational apocalypse cult. Which he should.
There was a roughly 15 year pause in the warming trends right before he made that comment. It's best described as statistical noise, but it's there. If someone brings that up to suggest the models might not quite be accurate and there might not be a literal apocalypse in 10 years, they often don't get a reasoned debate, they get dismissed as climate deniers. That's actually the argument Cruz was making, that the people he was criticizing don't make scientific arguments, they make doctrinal claims, and call anything else heresy.
And that statement is your evidence that he is a climate change denier. The irony is thick.
The irony isn't so much thick as it is irrelevant.
After you claimed he was not a climate change denier I was curious and decided to investigate. The first spot was obviously Ted Cruz' Wikipedia page, which had the direct quote "The satellite data demonstrate that there has been no significant warming whatsoever for 17 years" I was all like "well case closed then, a direct quote denying climate change". I followed the cited articles to get one with a direct quote which was the linked one. The fact that he was talking about it in the context of what he thought of his ideological opponents is irrelevant.
I also chose that quote since I wanted a recent quote and if he has changed his mind I did not want to misrepresent him. I've done some more research since then:
In 2015 he claimed that "The scientific evidence doesn't support global warming".
In 2019 he claimed that "the data are mixed". This was after
the pause had seemingly ended*, although he still cited the last two years drop in temperature from the same graph as one of the points of data in favor of climate change not occurring, despite that being a highly dubious data-point.
With this in mind, I apologize. Calling him a climate change denialist would be accurate within my Overton window but from a more neutral point of view I cannot make that claim. I maintain that he is choosing whatever data he can find that supports the policies he wants to pursue and ignores the data that doesn't and the scientists that to 97 % agree that man-made climate change is real and that his skepticism is largely fueled by the fossil gas industry and that his actions delays efforts that are necessary to ensure the continued survival of humanity, but I cannot prove that.
You said that "He's a 'green' political nonsense opponent". Does that include
his support of withdrawing from the Paris agreement in your mind?
*
alternative link