Remember, “Obama bought a beach house so Globaloney is fake” - Fwedian Logic.

RODANTHE, N.C. — Early last year, a house crumbled into the sea in this small Outer Banks community, home to some of the most rapid rates of erosion and sea level rise on the East Coast.

Not long after, another house fell. And then another.

Wave after wave, the ocean had clawed away at the beach until the stilted homes finally gave way. The collapses spread debris — and anxiety — for more than a dozen miles along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. A video that captured one house surrendering to the surf in May went viral, bringing national attention to the urgency of the problem along this scenic stretch of coast.

Rodanthe’s struggles encapsulate thorny and unresolved issues around risky coastal development, the unevenness of real estate disclosures, questions about personal risk, the difficulties of protecting oceanfront properties and the obstacles to moving people out of harm’s way when necessary.

At least a dozen more houses in Rodanthe remain in serious danger of falling into the ocean. Faced with shrinking options, numerous homeowners are scrambling to move their homes — at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars — further from the tides that seem to creep ever closer. They have filed permits, lined up contractors and teamed up with neighbors, all in a bid to buy more time from the encroaching sea.

As similar shifts befall other communities, scientists say, millions of acres of U.S. land and hundreds of thousands of homes and offices could slip below swelling tide lines over time. Properties in vulnerable areas could lose value, harming homeowners and sapping local tax bases.

“This is a national and a global problem,” said Reide Corbett, an oceanographer and executive director of the Coastal Studies Institute at East Carolina University, who sees in Rodanthe a glimpse of the quandaries that await other places as seas rise, storms intensify and deteriorating shorelines creep closer to human developments.

North Carolina has been lampooned as a hotbed of greedy developers trying to “outlaw” the rising tide. Some climate-change experts are sympathetic, however, calling the rebellion an understandable reaction to sea-level forecasts that are rapidly becoming both widely available and alarmingly precise.

In 2010, the panel reviewed the scientific literature and concluded that the seas along the North Carolina coast could rise anywhere from 15 inches to 55 inches over the coming century, a forecast in line with projections by federal agencies and various other states.

But the science panel took a step further. For planning purposes, it said, the state should figure on 39 inches by 2100.

Nationwide, $700 billion of coastal property could be below mean sea level by the end of the century — and an additional $730 billion could be at risk at high tide.

“The main problem they have is fear,” said Michael Orbach, a marine policy professor at Duke University who has met with coastal leaders. “They realize this is going to have a huge impact on the coastal economy and coastal development interests. And, at this point, we don’t actually know what we’re going to do about it.”

“We are going to see more and more of these challenges going forward. The process of shoreline erosion is not going to go away,” Corbett said.

In Rodanthe, there are ongoing tensions over what worsening erosion will mean for property values, tourism and quality of life — and disagreement over exactly what should be done and who bears responsibility.

On three streets, each high tide is a reminder of the hard questions homeowners face, and the lack of easy answers.