60 Minutes: "New Orleans is Sinking"

On tonight's 60 Minutes, "natural disaster expert" Prof. Tim Kusky of the Earth Sciences Department at St. Louis University will advocate a "gradual pull-out from the city". He says that in 90 years:
"New Orleans is going to be 15 to 18 feet below sea level, sitting off the coast of North America surrounded by a 50 to 100-foot-tall levee system to protect the city... That's the projection, because we are losing land on the Mississippi Delta at a rate of 25 to 30 square miles per year. That's two acres per hour that are sinking below sea level..."
Kathleen Blanco's office wants CBS to hold off on the report:

Andy Kopplin, Blanco's chief for the governor's main panel dealing with the rebuilding effort, the Louisiana Recovery Authority, wrote CBS producers asking the network to reconsider.
"We are very concerned about the preview of your story on New Orleans' future posted on the '60 Minutes' Web site and hope it is not an accurate reflection of your work," Kopplin's letter said...
"We know of many scientists and engineers who have spent considerable parts of their careers becoming experts in addressing coastal land loss in Louisiana and who disagree fundamentally with Prof. Kusky's purported comments," Kopplin wrote.
The letter says, "I cannot request strongly enough that you delay the airing of your story and immediately get in contact with some of these scientists in order to provide your viewers with scientific objectivity as well as balance in your report."

A battle of the academics ensues:

... Kopplin's letter was attached to a letter from Donald Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, strongly disputing Kusky's conclusions and raising questions about Kusky's credentials.
"Quick research reveals that Prof. Kusky's expertise is in ophiolites, rock sequences that formed on the oceanic edge of tectonic plates, in the Archean eon about 3 billion years ago," Boesch's letter states.
He criticized some of Kusky's writing as being no better than "an undergraduate paper" that he would give a low grade.