GOP Rep. Mo Brooks: Erosion to Blame for Rising Sea Levels

Republicans on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology voiced their skepticism during a Wednesday hearing about evidence suggesting sea levels are rising as a result of climate change, according to Science. Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and Lamar Smith (R-TX) both expressed doubt that climate change is a real phenomenon, saying that the committee “should all be open to different points of view” and that it needed to “acknowledge the uncertainties that exist.” Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) then expressed concerns about data being presented to the committee about rising sea levels. He suggested that the rise in sea levels was due to land erosion making the sea floor rise. “Every time you have that soil or rock or whatever it is that is deposited into the seas, that forces the sea levels to rise,” he said. “[B]ecause now you have less space in those oceans, because the bottom is moving up.” Philip Duffy, former senior adviser to the U.S. Global Change Research Program and current president of the Woods Hole Research Center, responded to Brooks that rocks or soil would have “minuscule effects.” This comes as April 2018 was just named the third-hottest April in recorded history.