Republican congressman explains sea-level rise: it’s rocks falling into the sea

A member of Congress has suggested that the White Cliffs of Dover tumbling into the English Channel was causing rising sea levels.

Instead, Brooks pointed to silt deposition as well as erosion as a cause of rising sea levels. Questioning scientist Phil Duffy of the Woods Hole Research Center, Brooks postulated that silt and mud washed by rivers into the ocean caused water levels to rise as it settled on the sea floor. “Now you have got less space in those oceans because the bottom is moving up,” he said.

He went on: “What about the White Cliffs of Dover … [and] California, where you have the waves crashing against the shorelines, and time and time again you have the cliffs crashing into the sea? All of that displaces water which forces it to rise, does it not?”

Duffy answered: “I’m pretty sure on human timescales, those are minuscule effects.”

The questioning went on as Brooks argued the Antarctic ice sheet was actually growing. A recent study reported that the ice sheet had shrunk by 1,463km from 2010 to 2016.