A range of scientists warned SEJ conference participants that coastlines and oceans are undergoing profound changes and that although policy makers are poised to spend tens of billions of dollars to repair some of the damage, their plans do not always mirror scientific findings.

"I would suggest that there is a serious disjoint between what we know and what we are practicing," said Jane Lubchenco, an Oregon State University professor of zoology and the former president of AAAS.

Concerns about the nation's and the world's coasts were echoed at several panels during the SEJ annual conference in Baltimore (October 9–13). Those attending had only to walk a few blocks from their downtown hotel to glimpse Baltimore's Inner Harbor, a key component of one endangered coastal estuary, the Chesapeake Bay.

The Chesapeake has been changing since Europeans arrived nearly 400 years ago, said Donald Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. But he said nutrient runoff, especially over the past 50 years from agriculture and development, has wreaked havoc with the Bay's aquaculture, leaving a vast dead zone. He said a range of potential mitigation efforts could cost between $10 billion and $20 billion.

"We think we can recover the condition of the Bay, not to the level it was in the days of John Smith, but at least to how it was in the 40s and 50s," Boesch said.

Similar major public works efforts are being considered on the lower Mississippi River of Louisiana, in Florida's Everglades, and elsewhere. Denise Reed, a geologist with the University of New Orleans, said she anticipates soon seeing formal proposals for spending some $14 billion so that Mississippi River sediment can again flood Louisiana's lowlands and prevent erosion of coastal property along the Gulf of Mexico. The loss of sediment, which is channeled down the river by levees constructed in the past century, is so great that up to 40 square miles of property are being washed away every year in Louisiana.

Meanwhile, in Florida, engineers estimate that reintroducing fresh water to the Everglades could cost at least $8 billion. The Army Corps of Engineers diverted the water 75 years ago into canals to reclaim a swamp considered worthless.

But some scientists addressing the meeting said the Everglades project appears to be ignoring yet another largely man made threat, global warming.

Coastal flooding is one of the most likely consequences of climate change, according to Ann Fisher of Penn State University, who headed an interdisciplinary team that studied climate change in the Mid-Atlantic region. The Mid-Atlantic study suggested that sea levels could rise 4 to 12 inches by 2003 and 15 to 40 inches by 2095.

In response to a question, J. Court Stevenson of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science said that Everglades planners are paying only limited attention to the potential impacts of climate change.

Still, coastal planners may soon take more notice. Fisher said her group studied Cape May County, N.J. and found that wealthy beach- front property owners are far more likely to be affected than lower-income residents living farther from the ocean. Beach protection is feasible but expensive, she warned.

One major property owner, The Nature Conservancy, is already involved in the climate change/global warming issue. The non-profit group has bought and preserved more than 12 million acres across the country.

"We have concluded that climate change is the biggest threat to our mission," said Tia Nelson, director of the climate change project for The Nature Conservancy. "Place no longer insures permanence."

Nelson added that land-change policies appear to be one of the most cost-effective strategies for reducing global warming. She said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report concludes that reducing emissions through land-use changes could off-set fossil fuel emissions by as much as 20 percent by 2050.

But numerous constraints remain for public policymakers.

Lubchenco said the word is not getting out or being heard by those who set policy. Part of the problem might be the difficulties science sometimes has in communicating its findings. She said also that groups with vested interests are running disinformation campaigns and distorting scientific findings.

As an example, she cited new research indicating that more diverse and rich environments are being found in protected marine reservations and that there may be a spillover to adjacent areas. Lubchenco said there is a "very strong, instantaneous backlash to that information" from critics who "suggested that the research was being used to fix all problems, and basically overstating what was in the findings."

Andy Rosenberg, dean of Life Sciences at the University of New Hampshire and a former regulator in the North Atlantic, said critics of particular research findings often counter that ocean science is not an exact science.

"That is true," added Rosenberg. "In the regulatory forum, it easy to pick apart the science."

Sometimes the constraints come in different ways.

Fisher, of Penn State, said she was never directed to downplay the significance of impacts coastal areas will likely sustain from global warming. But she said the research, funded primarily by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, had to concentrate on impacts and not on prevention strategies.

Now the Mid-Atlantic states task force is launching a new initiative. It will work with local government officials in Hampton Roads, Va., and Cape Cod, Mass., and elsewhere on land use and global warming initiatives. The task force, Fisher said in an interview, "will provide information and tools so that local officials can make decisions on land use and climate change."