In the last two days, there have been two laughable claims about sea level rise. The first was yesterday when the Wall Street Journal published a ridiculous piece by Fred Singer claiming that climate change had nothing to do with sea level rise. Today, North Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks suggested that it was rocks falling into the ocean. Interestingly, Brooks represents the district where NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center is located.

Just to be clear here (and there is no scientific debate about this), the global rise in sea level is overwhelmingly due to two things.

Melting glaciers. Thermal expansion of sea water due to the global temp. increase.



The third is changes in water on land from various things, but this is quite small and mostly climate/land use related.

Sad times when a typical 11-year-old has a better understanding of basic Earth science than a congressman on the House Science committee. He could have just asked NASA. I’ll save him the trouble:

It’s not the rocks in the ocean. Ask any 5th grader congressman.