Living in a coastal area, especially one that is as subject to tides as Charleston, means I pay attention to the rise and fall of the water level.

And I've noticed the water seems to be just a bit higher than it did just a few years ago.

I'm probably not the only one who has noticed this. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 153 million people in the United States lived in coastal counties, or 53 percent of the population, in 2003. By next year, the coastal population number is likely to hit 160 million.

And, in 2003, 23 of the 25 most densely populated U.S. counties were coastal. No real news there; seaside property has always been the most desirable.

Admittedly, the numbers are slightly suspect due to definitions. California has six of the 10 fastest-growing coastal counties, but two of them are Riverside and San Bernardino Counties. What? Now, I've spent most of my life in those two counties, and unless there was some extreme seismic activity that I don't know about, neither of these two counties touch an ocean. But, Newport Beach is 47 miles from my parents' front door. I guess that almost qualifies, but I never considered my old area to be coastal. If anything, Riverside will be the place all those L.A folks will go if they're looking for higher ground.

Now, according to a news article picked up by the Associated Press last Saturday, climate change could endanger coastal cities worldwide with its byproducts of rising seas and flooding. The Worldwatch Institute, an environmental think tank, reports that 21 of the world's 33 largest population centers are coastal and are "highly vulnerable."

Worldwatch is referring to the megalopoles here. Supercities, where the population is predicted to hit eight million within the next eight years. In the United States, this means New York City and Los Angeles, the two largest cities. World cities that are likely to face the flood are: Dhaka in Bangladesh; Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro; Shanghai and Tianjin in China; Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt; Mumbai and Kolkata in India; Jakarta in Indonesia; Tokyo and Osaka-Kobe in Japan; Lagos in Nigeria; Karachi in Pakistan; Bangkok in Thailand.

In just the past few years we've seen some interesting, live-on-camera footage of global warming's effects. I'm thinking of the photos I saw of chunks falling off the Antarctic continent. The recent photo -- which I posted -- of the ice melting enough around the North Pole to open up the Northwest Passage. And, yeah, there are plenty of scientists who believe that (man-made) warming trends in the Gulf of Mexico helped fuel Hurricane Katrina into the destructive killer that it was.

OK, pundits claim global warming isn't real. It's pseudoscience. A scare tactic calculated to throw a monkey wrench into that thing they call progress.

Perhaps there's some validity to what they're saying, but not all that much. Since Day One, the earth has been on a rollercoaster trying to find a comfortable temperature. This tiny blue planet has had its warming trends (the Jurassic/Cretaceous periods), and a time of cooling off with the Ice Age. But unless the dinosaurs had a tremendous problem with flatulence, you can't pin any climate changes on any species -- until man and his toys. I don't care how big they are; even after a meal of broccoli and black beans, a Brontosaurus has nothing on a human driving an SUV.