Earth is heating at an alarming rate, a NASA scientist said to me in 1979. Today I can’t stop thinking about that remark.

[EDITING now to repost soon] I was packing up after interviewing him about his work, where he went to Antarctica several times a year. I had a new job as News Writer/ Editor in the LBJ Space Center newsroom. 

"You want to know a story that is really going to  be big,” he said, “The planet is heating at an alarming rate."

I said, huh?

"I see it firsthand." he continued, excited. "I fly into Antarctica every few months I have for 30 years. It’s shocking, the ice shelf is disappearing, you can see a difference- every time I fly in more ice is gone.” [Note: I do not remember his exact words.]

“Do you realize the significance of that?”  he asked.

He was kinda scaring me but I listened.

“When all that ice melts, it will release an enormous amount of water into the atmosphere and ocean," louder higher pitched voice, "It will affect the dynamics of the entire planet.” 

I stared at him with my mouth open. I was 31 years old, had just gotten my bachelor's degree and finagled my way into a job where I was in way over my head.

I don't think it registered with me how important it was, what he was saying, as it was so hard to grasp, the Antarctic is melting? Massive amount of moisture released could disrupt life on the planet forever?

About five years later I wasn't in Houston anymore, but I never forgot that conversation, especially in the past 20 years as the impact of what he said has become real clear. When news reports started to come out about global warming, I would read everything I could get my hands on. 

About a month ago age 77, I was in my kitchen thinking, I really miss the rush I used to get when I post at City of Angels blog about the pedophile priests and lots of people would read it. what can I write about, and I remembered that NASA geologist, who I'm not going to name because I later learned when he said that to me he was leaking. Next time I saw that scientist in the company cafeteria he made it real clear that he couldn't talk about how the Earth is heating too fast there where so many other employees were nearby.

Then around 1983 the Air Force showed up, moved into offices down the hall from us in full uniform at NASA Houston, and it didn’t feel like a cool civilian agency anymore. I got a job in a PR firm in Beverly Hills.

A few weeks back Donald Trump's denial of global warming and climate change was in the news at the same time as floods fires mayhem and stories about the melting Antarctic. Here in my kitchen in Tahoe I said to myself, after 2025 no one will call global warming a hoax again; and I thought about my colleague at NASA wherever he is today and those very critical words he said to me in 1979.

Planet Earth is heating at an alarming rate. 

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-Kay Ebeling, producer of Heating Planet blog