Rising Tides and the Changing Coast

The sea level at North Carolina's coast will probably rise one meter by the end of the century thanks to global warming. With about 2,000 square miles of the coast just a meter or less above sea level, state residents can expect radical changes. The Outer Banks could be cut to pieces, water might threaten thousands of homes and buildings and the coastal ecosystem would never be the same.

Host Frank Stasio talks about global warming and its impact on the ocean and the coast of North Carolina with Rob Young, director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University; John Bruno, associate professor in the department of biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Naomi Oreskes, a professor of history and science studies at the University of California, San Diego, and author of "Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming" (Bloomsbury Press/2010).