Age feature writer Jo Chandler is a seasoned worrier, but not a catastrophist. She has worried about the looming spectre of climate change for years, while always clinging to the modicum of comfort that it was something gradual, even stoppable.
Lately, the most sober and serious of scientists are increasingly preoccupied with climate tipping points – sinister, swift, and inescapable, plunging the planet into something unrecognisable. So many graphs, all tracking emphatically in the wrong direction. Together they conjure a picture of all of humanity crowded aboard a leaky boat, on a darkening sea, under a thunderous sky.
In a attempt to understand what is happening to our planet, Chandler travels to climate science frontiers Antarctica, the Great Barrier Reef, the Wimmera and North Queensland's tropical rainforests, meeting the scientists and discovering the realities embedded in the science.
Written in the vein of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief, Feeling the Heat is part detective story and part quest. Chandler puts together some of the pieces in the climate puzzle, meets many passionate and eccentric characters, discovers what makes them tick, and learns a thing or two about herself.
