That sinking feeling over rising seas

For all the arguments about the cause of global warming and whether it makes sense to do anything, there are discrete measurements that scientists have been taking for years gauging the loss of coastal land due to several factors: normal erosion, damaging storms and, yep, sea level rise. We’re reported over the years about how land in the coastal region of North Carolina is disappearing – some 1,250 acres per year, according to calculations by Dr. Stan Riggs at East Carolina University. The shoreline in Northeastern N.C. is receding at a rate of about 2.7 feet per year, he concudes.
So the Legislative Commission on Global Climate Change is looking, among many other things, at how coastline changes should affect state policy. They heard some eye-opening descriptions from a number of witnesses last week, including Jeff Williams, a coastal marine geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey center in Woods Hole, Mass.
Williams described how sea level rise due to melting of ice caps and glaciers, and the expansion of warming waters, may double the rate from about eight inches in the past century to perhaps 16 inches in the next 100 years. The USGS has studied what it calls coastal vulnerability and has published several maps online. Here’s a link to the East Coast study . Enlarge that map and note that the red areas denote the highest vulnerability – and note that North Carolina has a lot of red areas.
Here's another link, this one to Cape Hatteras and its vulnerability.
Legislators, take note. Does it make sense to rebuild highways and bridges in those areas?