MikeAqua:

 

Interesting point.  We (people) have massively increased erosion (= sediment into ocean) and meteors land in the ocean too. 

 

Intuitively I can't see either of those things causing the magnitude of change observed.  But I'd be curious to see the numbers.

 

Because I'm a scientist and I like to see questions answered empirically, rather than dismissed because of who asked them.

 

I like to put numbers on things too. Here's my attempt;

Water covers about 70% of the Earth's surface. So, to raise the water level by 3cm, on average 7cm of rock has to be removed from *all* the land (150 million km^2). Thats about 10 trillion cubic metres of eroded rock. Rock density is about 3, so that's about 30 trillion tons. All that rock has to be transported to the sea by rivers. The Mississippi carries 150 million tons annually (although that's *decreasing* with better land management). Assume it's been the same for the last 100 years, so it transported about 1.5 billion tons in the last century. You therefore need about 2,000 rivers the size of the Mississippi to move the eroded rock to the sea. Q.E.D? So, whilst erosion does lower land heights (e.g. the bit that fell off the summit of Mt Cook a few years back), it's just not on this epic scale.

As a rough first approximation, if meteorites (meteors don't have any effect ;) unless you want to argue gravitation) were causing the sea level rise, they would also raise the land by about the same amount (ignoring the squashing effect of the meteor's impact, and the material thrown into the air on impact, 70% of which would eventually get into the oceans). Meteors don't have a significant impact (hah!) on topography, so I think it's safe to say they don't significantly raise the sea level.