Earth heating at alarming rate, a 1979 NASA scientist told me: How this blog got its name

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. 

"The story you should write that is really going to  be big is,” he said, “the planet is heating at an alarming rate."

I said, huh?

"The planet, Earth. I see it firsthand, the ice shelf is disappearing," he continued, excited. "I fly into Antarctica every few months I have for 30 years. It’s shocking, 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 in the Southern Hemisphere, 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 30 years old, had just gotten my bachelor's degree and finagled my way into a job at NASA 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 will 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 more than a decade later and were shot down by a sinister invisible force putting out false information, I would read everything I could get my hands on the subject, astonished that humans were not responding. 

About a month ago, age 77, I was in my kitchen thinking, I really miss the rush I used to get when I’d post at City of Angels blog about the pedophile priests and I’d see on my dashboard that hundreds of people read it. 

That period of my life over now I wondered, What can I write about, as I poured hot water over a teabag-

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 employee cafeteria, he made it real clear that he couldn't talk about how the Earth is heating too fast there where so many other people were nearby.

Then around 1981 the Air Force showed up at NASA Houston, moved into offices down the hall from us in full uniform, and it didn’t feel like a cool civilian space agency anymore. I got a job in a PR firm in Beverly Hills.

A few weeks back, Donald Trump's calling global warming and climate change a hoax 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.” 

I started Heating Planet blog.

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-Kay Ebeling, South Lake Tahoe, California, Earth