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Republican lawmaker explains rising sea levels, says it's a result of rocks falling into the ocean

Despite other experts contending his theory, the GOP lawmaker remained unchanged on his position and added that erosion also played a factor in the surge of sea levels.

A Republican lawmaker from Alabama on Thursday, May 17, claimed that rocks falling into the ocean were causing rising sea levels across the world. 

Representative Mo Brook, on Thursday, said that the rocks from the White Cliffs of Dover and California coastline along with the silt from rivers which empty into the ocean are responsible for the rise in sea levels. The GOP lawmaker is a member of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. 

Brooks, during the hearing, said: "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," according to CNN.

Reports state that climate scientist Philip Duffy, in response to Brooks' comments about the sea levels, said: "The rate of global sea-level rise has accelerated and is now four times faster than it was 100 years ago." Duffy is a president of the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts as well as a former senior adviser to the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

Duffy then provided a rebuttal stating that the factors Brooks was mentioning are considered miniscule on human timescales. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has confirmed that sea level across the world has risen and is caused by "the added water from melting ice sheets and glaciers and the expansion of seawater as it warms." 

Reports state that Brooks, during the meeting, also commented on the state of the Antarctic's ice levels and claimed that they were growing instead of melting. However, scientists would disagree. Recent data from NASA stated that the Antarctic ice levels are shrinking at an accelerated pace.

NASA also reported last year that both the Antarctic and Arctic sea ice levels were at record lows, therefore, the melting point of ice could also be contributing to the rise in sea levels. The report showed that the polar sea ice covered a total of 6.26 million square miles, "790,000 square miles less than the average global minimum extent."