3 questionable takes on climate change from the House science committee

White cliffs of Dover.
(Image credit: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

The House's science committee was supposed to spend Wednesday learning how technology can address climate change.

But climate change expert Philip Duffy's testimony to the committee was more of a two-hour battle between Republicans and the facts of global warming. Here are three questionable moments from the hearing, per Science magazine, and you can mine the full hearing for more gems here. Kathryn Krawczyk

1. NASA says that melting ice is a main cause of sea level rise. But Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) said Wednesday that the real culprit is erosion, namely from the White Cliffs of Dover as they collapse into the ocean.

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2. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the committee chairman, shared slides showing that increased fossil fuel consumption doesn't correlate to rising sea levels — a view that Science noted "rejects thousands of scientific studies." Smith's data came from a single measurement station in San Francisco.

3. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) said that the committee should "be open to different points of view" — including whether humans are actually the main cause of global warming, as the committee has accused federal scientists of manipulating climate data before.

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Kathryn Krawczyk

Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.