North Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks is making headlines again for blaming sea level rise on rocks falling into the ocean and silt washing from major rivers. 
 
 Brooks was one of several Republican lawmakers sparring with a climate scientist at a Wednesday hearing of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. 
 
 Included in the arguing were Republicans Lamar Smith of Texas, the committee's chairman, and California's Dana Rohrabacher, but the websites for Science and Esquire used Brooks' picture to illustrate their coverage. 
 
 "Republican lawmaker: Rocks tumbling into ocean causing sea level rise," read the Science site's headline. 
 
 "Is the Human Race Too Dumb to Survive on This Planet?" asked Esquire also featuring Brooks. 
 
 "Here's how big a rock you'd have to drop into the ocean to see the rise in sea level happening now," chimed in the Washington Post. 
 
 Brooks was quoted saying, "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, because now you have less space in those oceans, because the bottom is moving up." He referred to erosion on the California coastline and England's White Cliffs of Dover and silt from the Mississippi and Nile rivers. 
 
 Brooks also said Antarctic ice is growing, not shrinking, and that statement was challenged by Philip Duffy, president of the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts and former senior adviser to the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Duffy cited NASA as one of his sources, and Brooks replied that, "I've got a NASA base in my district and, apparently, they're telling you one thing and me a different thing." 
 
 Brooks at length 
 
 Brooks spoke at greater length Thursday afternoon between votes on the House floor. 
 
 "You put it all together, erosion is the primary cause of sea level rise in the history of our planet," Brooks said, "and these people who say to the contrary may know something about climate but they don't know squat about geology." 
 
 "Keep in mind I'm talking millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of years, erosion is the primary cause of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of cubic miles of sea displacement that in turn forces the sea levels to rise," he said. 
 
 "But if you're talking a shorter historical time span," Brooks said, "you're going to have great fluctuations up and down due to the quantities of ice that exist on a planet." In an ice age, sea levels drop significantly, he said. 
 
 The oceans "are always rising," Brooks said, except during times of ice buildup that offset erosion. Look at the "huge alluvial planes that exist around the great rivers like the Mississippi, the Amazon, the Mekong, the Danube, the Yangtze and you'll see these huge alluvial planes made up entirely of erosion," he said. 
 
 Brooks disagreed with Duffy during the hearing about whether Antarctic ice is growing or shrinking. Duffy said satellite records "clearly" show shrinkage and a speedup of that shrinkage. 
 
 Brooks questioned Duffy's data, and Duffy said it came from the National Snow and Ice Data Center and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration." That's when Brooks mentioned the NASA base in his district and said it was telling him something different. 
 
 Wrong in the '60s 
 
 "You've got to make sure you're careful in terminology," Brooks said later Thursday. "I'm talking ice quantity. He's talking about surface area. Two entirely different things." 
 
 Brooks said the "total ice quantity, which is what affects sea levels, has been increasing. The Antarctica sea ice varies from year to year and from decade to decade." The ice is growing in quantity on the interior of Antarctica, he said. 
 
 "I never said anything about Antarctic sea ice, but that's the comparison they make," Brooks said of the press. "I'm talking about Antarctica ice, which is both the sea ice and the interior of Antarctica. And the interior is where the vast majority of ice is." 
 
 "I've never been skeptical of climate change," Brooks said. "The climate is always changing. The planet is always either heating up or cooling down. It is very rarely constant." 
 
 Brooks was asked about the theory that current warming is a threat and human activity is part of its cause. "In the late '60s and early '70s, the climate scare was cooling, that we're going to enter into a new ice age...," Brooks said. "They turned out to be wrong." 
 
 "What I'm trying to establish is that a lot of these climatologists have no idea what they're really talking about," Brooks said, "and it's because we have not had a long enough period time with exact scientific measurement to know what the climate's going to be like 50 years from now or 100 years from now." 
 
 Brooks said studies and projections made in the 1990s by "these so-called climatologists" were almost all wrong "on the hot side as to where we would be in 2018." Over 90 percent were wrong, he said. 
 
 The bottom line 
 
 "The bottom line is nobody is smart enough to know with the evidence we have and the relatively small time frame we have - 50 years in the history of the planet. That's just not enough information with which to make accurate predictions." 
 
 So what is motivating scientists to say the Earth is dangerously warming? 
 
 "Money," Brooks said. "Money to invest in a certain kind of resources where you might have a financial interest. There's also politics as you're trying to cobble together the votes to win an election, that's probably part of it, too." ||||| Mo Brooks rejects notion that global warming is causing sea levels to increase, and says: ‘What about the White Cliffs of Dover?’ 
 
 A member of Congress has suggested that the White Cliffs of Dover tumbling into the English Channel was causing rising sea levels. 
 
 Everglades under threat as Florida's mangroves face death by rising sea level Read more 
 
 Republican Mo Brooks of Alabama pushed back at the notion that rising sea levels were the result of global warming in a hearing of the House Science, Space and Technology on Wednesday. 
 
 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. 
 
 Duffy disagreed, noting that “we have satellite records clearly documenting a shrinkage of the Antarctic ice sheet and an acceleration of that shrinkage”, citing “the National Snow and Ice Data Center and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration” for his data. 
 
 However, Brooks insisted: “Well, I’ve got a Nasa base in my district, and apparently, they’re telling you one thing and me a different thing.” 
 
 Brooks said: “There are plenty of studies that have come that show with respect to Antarctica that the total ice sheet, particularly that above land, is increasing, not decreasing. Now, you could make a different argument if you want to talk about Greenland or the Arctic.” 
 
 Brooks, a graduate of Duke University and University of Alabama School of Law, was first elected to Congress in 2010 from his North Alabama district. In 2017, he mounted an unsuccessful bid for the US Senate vacated by attorney general Jeff Sessions. Brooks finished third in the Republican primary behind the eventual nominee Roy Moore as well as appointed incumbent Luther Strange. ||||| During a hearing of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology on Wednesday, Rep Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) pressed Philip Duffy, president of Woods Hole Research Center, to identify reasons that sea levels might be rising. 
 
 They are rising, without dispute, at an estimated rate of 3.3 millimeters a year. Much of that increase is attributed by scientists to melting surface ice. The planet loses tens of billions of tons of ice each year. Enough is lost from Antarctica alone to increase global sea levels by a millimeter every three years, but that figure isn’t steady. Sea level rise is occurring at an increasing rate. 
 
 Brooks asked Duffy what else might be contributing to that rise. Duffy pointed to ground subsidence, which is the sinking of the ground in places that can exacerbate the problem of rising sea levels. Cities like New Orleans are sinking quickly, even faster in many places than the seas are rising. 
 
 Brooks asked if any other factors were contributing to sea level rise. 
 
 “Those are all that I know of,” Duffy replied. 
 
 “What about erosion!” Brooks exclaimed. “Every single year that we’re on Earth, you have huge tons of silt deposited by the Mississippi River, by the Amazon River, by the Nile, by every major river system — and for that matter, creek, all the way down to the smallest systems. And every time you have that soil or rock whatever it is that is deposited into the seas, that forces the sea levels to rise. Because now you’ve got less space in those oceans because the bottom is moving up.” 
 
 “I’m pretty sure that’s …” Duffy tried to interject. 
 
 “What about the white cliffs of Dover?” Brooks continued. “California, where you have the waves crashing against the shorelines and time and time again you have the cliffs crash into the sea. All of that displaces the water which forces it to rise, does it not?” 
 
 “I’m pretty sure that on human time scales,” Duffy replied, “those are minuscule effects.” 
 
 Duffy is correct. 
 
 Brooks has a vision in his head like the classic experiment by Archimedes, in which the scientist sank down into his bath and noticed the water overflow — providing a way to determine the volume of his body. But the amount of water displaced by even a giant boulder falling into the ocean is not like a body going into a bathtub. It is, as Duffy said, minuscule. 
 
 Certainly 3.3 millimeters doesn’t sound like a lot of water to displace, and it does seem, to Brooks’s point, that it’s an amount — about 0.1 inch — that would be easy to displace with a cliff collapse near San Diego. The equivalent rise relative to surface area in an Olympic-sized swimming pool would be 0.0000000000114 millimeters. That’s not possible, though, since a water molecule isn’t that small. 
 
 But when you apply 3.3 millimeters of rise to the entire ocean? We’re talking about a lot of water that’s displaced — 3.3 millimeters across about 362 million square kilometers of surface area. The total volume displaced, then, would be 1.19 trillion cubic meters of water. 
 
 We know from Archimedes’ work that the amount of earth required to displace that much water is the same volume: 1.19 trillion cubic meters. Here’s a corny video by a science teacher showing how it works. 
 
 So to make the oceans rise 3.3 millimeters, we would need to displace that 1.2 trillion cubic meters of water upward by dropping in 1.2 trillion cubic meters of dirt or stone or whatever. 
 
 How much is that? It’s a sphere of earth a bit over 8 miles in diameter. If we were to balance it at the top of the Capitol building, it would look like this. 
 
 If the sphere were stone, it would weigh about 6.6 quadrillion pounds. Just drop that in the ocean and — bloop! — 3.3 millimeters of sea-level increase. (We’re ignoring here that dropping it in some parts of the ocean would result in a mountain in that location. For the sake of explaining things, we’re pretending that the oceans are just one big uniform pool of water and that the sea level rise is similarly consistent. This isn’t how it works, of course.) 
 
 Put another way, it’s a volume of earth equivalent to taking the top five inches of every one of the United States’ 9.1 million square miles of land area and using it to coat the bottom of the world’s oceans. That would push sea levels up by 3.3 millimeters. 
 
 But, remember: That sea level rise happens annually. So every year, we’d need to take the top five inches of the United States, roll it in a ball and drop it in the ocean to get the sort of sea level rise we’re currently seeing. Don’t worry, though; assuming that the depth of Earth’s crust is about 40 kilometers in the United States, it would take 309,000 years for us to get to the mantle. 
 
 Except, of course, that sea level rise is occurring at an increasing rate. If someone could check on the white cliffs of Dover for us, we’d appreciate it. ||||| Washington (CNN) A member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology evinced skepticism about climate change during an exchange with a witness about rising sea levels. 
 
 Instead, Alabama Republican Rep. Mo Brooks offered an additional culprit: soil or rock deposits into the world's waters. 
 
 E&E News reported on the comments of Brooks and others at the hearing, including California GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher who said he was "disturbed" that he heard people warning against questioning the link between human activity and climate change. 
 
 On Wednesday, at a hearing titled "using technology to address climate change," Brooks began by raising a broad question about rising ocean levels to the witness panel. 
 
 Philip Duffy, president of Woods Hole Research Center, said in response to the question that "the last 100-year increase in sea-level rise, as I mentioned earlier, has clearly been attributed to human activities, greenhouse gas emissions." 
 
 Brooks interjected and rephrased his question again, asking if there "are other factors." 
 
 "What about erosion?" Brooks offered during the exchange. He added: "Every time you have that soil or rock, whatever it is, that is deposited into the seas, that forces the sea levels to rise because now you've got less space in those oceans because the bottom is moving up." 
 
 Duffy responded that he did not believe that explained sea-level rise. 
 
 "I'm pretty sure that on human time scales those are minuscule effects," Duffy said. 
 
 Brooks then moved to ice levels and asserted that Antarctic ice is growing, to which Duffy responded that satellite records have documented "shrinkage of the Antarctic ice sheet and an acceleration of that shrinkage." 
 
 Brooks wrapped up his questioning by saying he had heard differently from NASA, and said there were "plenty of studies" showing an ice sheet increase in Antarctica. 
 
 "I've got a NASA base in my district," Brooks said. "And apparently, they're telling you one thing and me a different thing." 
 
 A day after the hearing, the committee tweeted a link to an op-ed from The Wall Street Journal denying climate change caused sea-level rise. 
 
 The Sea Is Rising, but Not Because of Climate Change 
 
 https://t.co/5IohGvDCHW — Sci,Space,&Tech Cmte (@HouseScience) May 17, 2018 
 
 According to NASA, Antarctica's ice sheets have lost mass since 2002. 
 
 The agency's site also said , "Sea level rise is caused primarily by two factors related to global warming: the added water from melting ice sheets and glaciers and the expansion of seawater as it warms." 
 
 Duffy, who worked on climate change policy in the Obama administration, told CNN on Thursday that while he had "never heard that particular line" on sea level rise before, he essentially had expected the tone of the hearing to feature climate change skepticism. 
 
 "None of that is new," Duffy said. "They've been doing that forever." 
 
 Duffy said he would have hoped a "productive" science committee would seek to formulate aggressive policy on climate change as well as expand the nation's scientific capabilities. 
 
 And as for the question of sea level rise, Duffy said, "It's really caused by climate change." ||||| State lawmakers ran into a problem this year when recommending a study on rising sea levels and their potential impacts on coastal Virginia. 
 
 It was not a scientific problem or a financial one. It was linguistic. 
 
 They discovered that they could not use the phrases "sea level rise" or "climate change" in requesting the study, in part because of objections from Republican colleagues and also for fear of stirring up conservative activists, some of whom believe such terms are liberal code words. 
 
 On its website, for example, the Virginia tea party described the proposed "sea level rise" study this way: "More wasted tax dollars for more ridiculous studies designed to separate us from our money and control all land and water use." 
 
 The group urged its members to contact elected officials right away to defeat the measure: "They will pass this without blinking if we don't yell loudly." 
 
 So lawmakers did away with all mention of sea level rise, substituting a more politically neutral phrase: "recurrent flooding." 
 
 The amended study, while fixed on the same research, sailed through the General Assembly and was signed by Gov. Bob McDonnell, who also has raised questions about what is causing slightly higher temperatures on the planet. 
 
 The episode illustrates the continuing, even increasing, volatility of climate change as a policy issue in Virginia, at the same time that other states and whole nations are moving forward with plans to combat the phenomenon. 
 
 It also shows how climate skeptics, through their political connections and organization, are forcing state and local government to stay clear of certain buzzwords in quietly pursuing a strategy, else they risk unleashing a brawl. 
 
 Government officials and scientists just shrug when asked about the language games, especially when the subject is sea level rise. To them, the debate should not be about what is causing waters to slowly rise, but what should be done about it. 
 
 "These studies need to be done if we're going to logically tackle these problems that scientific data unequivocally proves are happening," said Larry Atkinson, an oceanographer at Old Dominion University who is overseeing a climate change initiative that focuses on rising sea levels. 
 
 "So, whatever we have to call it, I've got no problem with that," he added. "What's the alternative? Do nothing?" 
 
 The semantics dance harkens to the days when "global warming" was commonly uttered. But after conservatives criticized and ridiculed Al Gore and others, "climate change" became the kinder, gentler way to communicate the same thing. 
 
 Now it appears that "climate change" and "sea level rise" are being phased out, in Virginia at least, amid political pressure from the far right. Emerging labels include "increased flooding risk," "coastal resiliency" and, of course, "recurrent flooding." 
 
 State Del. Chris Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, who insisted on changing the "sea level rise" study in the General Assembly to one on "recurrent flooding," said he wants to get political speech out of the mix altogether. 
 
 He said "sea level rise" is a "left-wing term" that conjures up animosities on the right. So why bring it into the equation? 
 
 "What people care about is the floodwater coming through their door," Stolle said. "Let's focus on that. Let's study that. So that's what I wanted us to call it." 
 
 According to scientific tide measurements at Sewells Point in Norfolk, the sea level has risen by 14.5 inches in the past 100 years. The trend is projected to continue for at least the next century, and some scientists predict that the rate could accelerate, with the level rising an additional 2 to 3 feet by 2100, and perhaps higher. 
 
 What seems certain is that Norfolk and the rest of coastal Virginia are going to get wetter, with more frequent flooding and more waterfront property and infrastructure at risk. 
 
 Complicating the problem is that, at the same time, land is sinking, a process called subsidence. Scientists are not sure at what rate the soft, marshy region is sinking, only that it plays a significant role in calculating "relative sea level rise." 
 
 This one-two punch of rising water and sinking land is what makes Hampton Roads the second-most-vulnerable region in the United States to flooding, behind only New Orleans. 
 
 Given the stakes, environmentalists are frustrated that Virginia has not made sea level rise a priority. And they see the sensitivity over semantics as symbolic of state reluctance to dive into a politically divisive topic. 
 
 The city of Norfolk, which is especially vulnerable to rising sea waters and subsidence, given its geography and marshy footprint, today is developing a "flooding strategy" through a "citizens flooding task force." Members include residents from neighborhoods that routinely flood after minor rains and slightly higher tide cycles. 
 
 The city also recently launched a "flooding awareness" website about its efforts. But the phrases "sea level rise" and "climate change" cannot be found there. 
 
 Fleta Jackson, a spokeswoman for the city's stormwater division, said the absence is not intentional. 
 
 "Sea level rise is definitely a part of the conversation," Jackson said. "It just doesn't appear in a definitive statement." 
 
 The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality is the clearinghouse for federal grants helping to pay for three specific studies of sea level rise in Hampton Roads, the Middle Peninsula and Northern Virginia. 
 
 At each stage of the studies, the state has altered its verbiage, said Laura Mc-Kay, state director of coastal zone management programs. 
 
 At first, McKay said, the studies were about "climate change." Then they were changed to "sea level rise." Now they are about "coastal resilience." And while the studies themselves are slightly different, McKay said, political sensitivities played a role. 
 
 "It's kind of silly," she said. "But the reality is, some of the phrases just really send people screaming. We want to use language that doesn't alienate people." 
 
 Kris Allen, a Virginia Beach businessman, is one climate skeptic who believes sea level rise is real, is a problem and should be studied and acted upon. Indeed, he would prefer that state and local studies be labeled as such. 
 
 He gets upset, however, when government wants to prescribe economically harmful regulations on coal and gas and enact strategies such as cap-and-trade to combat a phenomenon that might be more about sinking land. 
 
 "It's a game about control," Allen said, echoing a sentiment that government is really after more control of property rights and individual liberty. 
 
 State Sen. Ralph Northam, D-Norfolk, co-sponsored the "recurrent flooding" study that eventually won approval in the General Assembly this year. He said that when he met with state Del. Stolle, the co-patron in the House, he was told that the phrase "sea level rise" needed to go or the study "would end up in the circular file." 
 
 So Northam and other Democrats agreed to amend the proposal. 
 
 "It's kind of embarrassing that people are playing politics instead of just talking straight," Northam said. "But we went along with it. We needed the study done." 
 
 Today, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science is leading the $138,000 "flooding" study, along with scientists from the University of Virginia and ODU. Their work is expected to be completed by the end of the year, offering officials from low-lying Hampton Roads, the Eastern Shore and other coastal areas insight and ideas about rising waters and increased flooding. 
 
 State officials also hope the results will help win federal funds for combating sea level rise and coastal flooding, either by constructing sea walls or berms, or by elevating streets and moving infrastructure inland. 
 
 "I question whether we're doing the public a disservice by not telling it the way it is," said state Del. Kenneth Alexander, D-Norfolk, who also voted to amend the study name. "But we can't continue to dismiss it or kick it down the road." 
 
 Scott Harper, 757-446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com
– "What about the White Cliffs of Dover?" With that, a member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology made clear his skepticism about human-driven climate change Wednesday, suggesting rocks falling into the sea accounted for sea level rise. Alabama Republican Mo Brooks responded to a scientist's comment that "the last 100-year increase in sea-level rise … has clearly been attributed to human activities, greenhouse gas emissions" by asking if "other factors" like erosion could be at play. As "huge tons of silt" are deposited in the sea, "the bottom is moving up," Brooks said during the hearing about using technology to address climate change. Plus "you have the cliffs crashing into the sea. All of that displaces water," Brooks said, per the Guardian. Scientist Philip Duffy responded by noting erosion was responsible for "minuscule effects" in sea level rise; it would take a ball of earth 8 miles in diameter to raise ocean levels by about 0.1 inches, per the Washington Post. On Thursday, Brooks circled back to the topic on the House floor, per AL.com. "Erosion is the primary cause of sea level rise in the history of our planet," he added, "and these people who say to the contrary may know something about climate but they don't know squat about geology. Keep in mind I'm talking millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of years." Duffy also had follow-up comments Thursday, telling CNN sea-level rise is "really caused by climate change."