Science Ignorance On Display By The House Science Committee
GOP lawmaker says rocks falling into ocean to blame for rising sea levels, The Hill
“A Republican lawmaker on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee said Thursday that rocks from the White Cliffs of Dover and the California coastline, as well as silt from rivers tumbling into the ocean, are contributing to high sea levels globally. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) made the comment during a hearing on technology and the changing climate, which largely turned into a Q&A on the basics of climate research.”
Republican lawmaker: Rocks tumbling into ocean causing sea level rise, Science
“The Earth is not warming. The White Cliffs of Dover are tumbling into the sea and causing sea levels to rise. Global warming is helping grow the Antarctic ice sheet. Those are some of the skeptical assertions echoed by Republicans on the U.S. House of Representatives Science, Space and Technology Committee yesterday.”
Here’s how big a rock you’d have to drop into the ocean to see the rise in sea level happening now, Washington Post
“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.”
Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks loses to science in a landslide, Huntsville Times
“It would have been comical if it had come from a middle school science fair, but it didn’t. It came from a guy on a committee making decisions for the most powerful country on earth about the future of the planet. Brooks made his comments while questioning climate scientist Philip Duffy, who had pointed out that seas across the world are rising four times faster than they did a century ago. Instead of dealing with the ways to protect the future, to consider the possibility climate scientists know what they are talking about, he just threw rocks. “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 said. Mo’s laws. Perplexing for a scientist. “I’m pretty sure that on human time scales, those are miniscule effects,” Duffy responded.”
Rep. Mo Brooks responds to John Archibald’s ‘vilifying’ column, Huntsville Times
“Over the history of planet Earth, far and away the #1 cause of sea level rise has been erosion and its resulting deposits of sediment and rocks into the world’s seas and oceans. There is no close second cause of sea level rise. At a minimum, over many millions of years, thousands of cubic miles of eroded material have been deposited into the Earth’s seas, forcing rising sea levels.”
We have always had some profoundly ignorant people and politicians. What worries me is the number seems to be increasing.
The fossil fuel industries needs to educate their shills a little better.
It isn’t clear to me from the Science article, but did the same congressman say two contradictory things? That global warming isn’t real and that global warming is increasing the Antacrtic ice sheets? Regardless of the validity of those claims, they can’t both be true. I’m reminded of a street preacher in Berkeley, who I got to say that everything in the Bible is literally true as long as is correctly interpreted. Then I started wondering why I even bothered with that debate…
Similarly, when his head filled with rocks, it displaced his brain.
Here’s an explanation that Mo Brooks might understand: If the current rate of sediment deposition leads to sea level rise, then Noah’s Flood would have deposited so much sediment in the oceans that the waters would never have receded. (Noah was well stocked for such a contingency. But fortunately the waters did recede and the menu never got beyond dinosaur and unicorn.)
Oh. My. God… 🙁
Mo Brooks is an attorney. I favor banning anyone who has taken the bar exam from running for public office. We’d be much better off. Too many attorneys I have had the misfortune of dealing with are convinced they are the smartest person in the room on any topic regardless of who else is in the room. I think Rep Brooks fits the bill.
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”
~~William Shakespeare; Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2
Sedimentation ACTUALLY is a contributor to global sea level rise, as any first year geology or oceanography student could tell you!!!
http://www.geol.lsu.edu/pcl…
And what happens when all of that ice breaking off from the polar ice caps melts ….?
You might want to check on the mass balance figures for Greenland and the East Antarctic ice sheets (currently growing, but West Antarctica is losing mass, maybe due to a ton of subglacial volcanoes?). As for sea ice, that has little effect and it’s about normal right now. Sedimentation does add to sea level rise, as does the use of ancient groundwater in aquifers for agriculture. On a longer time scale, things average out because sediments (including a lot of water) gets subducted. Some of the water comes back relatively quickly via volcanic activity behind subduction zones, but we’re talking times scales of Myr. Additionally, MORB is extruded at ridges and the thermal activity raises the sea floor, which in turn raises sea level. But all of you guys know this, right?
Worldwide soil erosion is about 36 billion tons, or about 12 billion cubic meters, per year.
https://www.sciencedaily.co…
Only a fraction is actually carried into the ocean, but let’s assume 100%. However the measured sea level rise of 3.4 mm/yr requires an increase in volume of 1.2 trillion cubic meters per year. So the answer is that soil erosion does not contribute significantly to sea level rise.
https://www.nap.edu/read/13…
Midocean ridge extrusion is material that originates in deep strata beneath the ocean basin, so extrusion would be balanced by subsidence in the surrounding sea floor. It generally results in horizontal transport of the sea floor and subduction at continental margins, so would not be expected to cause sea level rise either.
As a contributor how does the thermal expansion of the ocean compare relative to melting ice caps when it comes to the effect of rising oceans?
It’s a factor I’ve seen discussed, but not a big one. Let’s see, a quick search turns up 0.000214 1/K as the thermal expansion coefficient of water and 2.75 km as the average depth of the ocean. That’s 0.59 meters per Celsius degree of ocean heating (or 1.0 feet per deg. F). That’s more than I’d expected, and definitely enough to get your feet (or your head) wet.
But the important difference is that this is linear. Double the temperature increase and the rise in sea level would double. But if you double temperature increase and you might do much, much more than double the effects on an ice sheet. The floating ice could go away entirely and the grounded ice could flow seaward at a much higher speed.
Props to Philip Duffy who managed to keep his composure.
And we wonder why this countries lower education system is failing. Or are these people the produces of a failed education system? And the effects are beginning to erode the upper education system.
Either way, having people like this in positions of leadership gives the worst impression of the intellect and intelligence of this country. Too many people equate “belief” with fact these days and it will just get worse with another 100 million people in this country in the next 35 years.
Causes:
• Decrementing education in general by equating the value of education with ability to earn money;
• Persistent tax cutting that hobbles the school systems;
• Feedback loop: disillusioned or misinformed voters continuing to decrement the value of education;
• The doctrine of False Equivalency.
That’s just a start.