Delaware Seashore State Park naturalists don their "End is Nigh" sandwich boards

Delaware braces for global warming | delmarvanow.com | The Daily Times

Baldwin said the primary focus of their presentation is to relay facts about what has already happened.

"We lead people to make their own conclusions," she said. "It tends to turn into a political issue and, because we work for the state, we can't voice our own opinions."

The possibility of Delaware sinking beneath 262 feet of water was mentioned only in passing.

"We don't say this is going to happen in the program," Markey said. "It may be a couple hundred years from now."

Although the scenario is the least likely, Kempton said the possibility can be sobering to the audiences he shares it with.

"People don't think, 'We don't care if this happens in 2400; we only care if it happens in 2200,'" he said.

The more likely scenarios are no less catastrophic.

A 21-foot sea level rise from the melting of the Greenland ice sheet will result in a drastically redefined coastline, the inundation of parts of Dover along the St. Jones River and a beachfront Millsboro, scientists said.