Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Weather Makers: How We Are Changing the Planet and What it Means for Life on Earth
    The Weather Makers: How We Are Changing the Planet and What it Means for Life on Earth
    The Weather Makers: How We Are Changing the Planet and What it Means for Life on Earth
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Weather Makers: How We Are Changing the Planet and What it Means for Life on Earth

    Written by Tim Flannery

    Narrated by Drew De Carvalho

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    From Dr. Tim Flannery, one of the world's foremost experts on conservation and ecology, comes a book of immeasurable importance. Hailed by Kirkus Reviews as a "powerful and persuasive" work that is "sure to provoke strong reaction," The Weather Makers is among the finest examinations of climate change ever written. Originally skeptical of global warming, Flannery spent years compiling his own research. What he learned is sobering. Human beings are weather makers whose production of carbon dioxide is polluting the planet at a devastating rate. Species are disappearing, the natural world is changing, and weather events, like Hurricane Katrina, are becoming increasingly disastrous. But as Flannery shows, there are cleaner ways to live-and doing so is the only way to avoid global catastrophe. Alarming but filled with ideas that inspire hope, The Weather Makers could be the most important book you ever read. "At last, here is a clear and readable account of one of the most important but controversial issues facing everyone in the world today.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMar 10, 2008
    ISBN9781449803193
    The Weather Makers: How We Are Changing the Planet and What it Means for Life on Earth
    Author

    Tim Flannery

    Professor TIM FLANNERY is a leading writer on climate change. A Scientist, an explorer and a conservationist, Flannery has held various academic positions including Professor at the University of Adelaide, Director of the South Australian Museum and Principal Research Scientist at the Australian Museum. A frequent presenter on ABC Radio, NPR and the BBC, he has also written and presented several series on the Documentary Channel. His books include Here on Earth and the international number one bestseller The Weather Makers. Flannery was named Australian of the Year in 2007.

    Related to The Weather Makers

    Related audiobooks

    Nature For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Soil assessment 101

      Aug 27, 2018

      Soil assessment 101
      3 min read

    • Article

      Douglas Tallamy

      Feb 24, 2022

      Douglas Tallamy
      8 min read

    • Article

      It’s Not About the Raccoon

      Jun 15, 2018

      It’s Not About the Raccoon
      3 min read

    • Article

      Is Fixing the Climate Incompatible with American Ideals?

      Jul 12, 2018

      Welcome to the Anthropocene. This greeting is belated, of course. We have all been here the whole of our lives, without knowing it for most of our days. The Anthropocene is a span of geological and evolutionary time (technically, an epoch) during whi

      8 min read

    • Article

      The Big Freeze

      May 20, 2022

      What was going on? The story isn’t entirely settled, but researchers are increasingly confident about the initial trigger: volcanoes. A 2015 study used data from ice cores to identify 25 major eruptions from the past 2,500 years. Between 1200 and 140

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Corals And The Capitalist

      Dec 1, 2022

      The Corals And The Capitalist
      15 min read

    • Article

      Mass Extinction

      Apr 15, 2021

      Mass Extinction
      8 min read

    • Article

      We Need to Talk About Peat

      Nov 7, 2019

      In his poems about strange bodies buried in the bogs of Northern Europe, the late Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney describes peatlands filled with “drowned-mouse fibres dried up and the whole limp, soggy cluster … Of weed leaf and turf mould.” Such is th

      7 min read

    • Article

      Review

      Apr 20, 2021

      Review
      11 min read

    • Article

      John Craven

      Mar 6, 2020

      For me and many others of a certain age, our first, shocking warning that the human race was seriously damaging the planet’s health came in the early 1960s when we read a seminal book called Silent Spring (see page 110). In it, the American biologist

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Climate Learning Tree

      Dec 26, 2019

      As a paleoclimatologist, I often find myself wondering why more people aren’t listening to the warnings, the data, the messages of climate woes—it’s not just a storm on the horizon, it’s here, knocking on the front door. In fact, it’s not even the fr

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Secrets in Tree Rings

      Apr 1, 2023

      The Secrets in Tree Rings
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Big Thaw

      May 8, 2021

      Chris Linder wants people to care about frozen dirt. But how does he get people to care about something that’s difficult to see? Linder, a science and natural history photographer, has spent the past decade with scientists studying thawing permafrost

      3 min read

    • Article

      THE Grapevine

      Aug 5, 2020

      THE Grapevine
      3 min read

    • Article

      “Climate Is A Factor That Underpins All Of Human History”

      Mar 16, 2023

      Rhiannon Davies: In The Earth Transformed you argue that the history of humanity is inextricably linked to the history of the environment. Why is that? Peter Frankopan: Well, I'm not the first person to make that point. The Abrahamic faiths – Christi

      9 min read

    • Article

      Is the Modern Mass Extinction Overrated?

      Oct 26, 2017

      After decades of researching the impact that humans are having on animal and plant species around the world, Chris Thomas has a simple message: Cheer up. Yes, we’ve wiped out woolly mammoths and ground sloths, and are finishing off black rhinos and S

      17 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Weather Makers

    4.5/5

    11 ratings9 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      If you read only one book about climate change let it be this one.
    • 4/5
      Flannery succeeds in explaining the science behind climate change and humanity's recent effect in an understandable manner. He traces the history of climate change on civilisations and ecologies, how scientists model the future and what it could mean, delves into the reasons why we, our governments and corporations have not responded yet and suggests future solutions. Flannery is in no doubt that we are tweaking the earth's climatic systems to such a degree that we are close to a tipping point, and that an inevitable momentum is already built into the them. The call to action is unmistakable and urgent. I live in one - and close to another - biodiversity hotspot that are both queued for extinction, namely the fynbos and succulent Karoo biomes - unless the vegetation can migrate..... The implication is clear - I may yet witness their passing.
    • 5/5
      I ended up getting so worked up about The Weather Makers that I ran around telling co-workers, fellow commuters and complete strangers that we are bad bad people who are killing the planet with CO2 emissions. I ended up going to websites to do check out the latest research and looked up ways that I could make my house more environmentally friendly. This was a clearly written and easy to read (although alarming) book and I wish that everyone would read it and become advocates for the environment not to mention agents of change.
    • 4/5
      Accessible synopsis on climate change research and our dwindling options for maintaining a temperate planet. Boy is this book depressing. Hey, good news — if we act now (7 years ago), we might be able to save nine-tenths of all living species!
    • 5/5
      Fossil fuels - oil, coal, and gas - are all that remains of organisms that, many millions of years ago, drew carbon from the atmosphere. When we burn wood, we release carbon that has been out of atmospheric circulation for a few decades, but when we burn fossil fuels, we release carbon that has been out of circulation for eons. Digging up the dead in this way is a particularly bad thing for the living to do. A comprehensive and easily accessible book covering climate change and all it's complexities. I had no idea how complex climate change is -- water temperatures, plankton blooms, changes in migratory patterns, the Gulf Stream and el Niño. I'm shocked by the number of peoples in the Arctic and on Pacific Island atolls that are about to lose their nations as conditions worsen and the land (actually ice or coral reefs) and food sources disappear. Sadly I am not surprised to learn of the bullying by Australia and the US of their neighbors and other nations. I was shocked though, that an Australian politician publicly stated that it would be easier to evacuate all the Pacific Island atolls than it would be to require that Australia decrease carbon emissions. Flannery also covers potential solutions that might lower the carbon in the atmosphere -- wind power, solar power, current and tidal power, utilization of different fuels for cars and cargo ships, legal action against corporations and governments that don't comply with set carbon emission levels and, unfortunately, increased use of nuclear power. This is the third book I've read by Flannery. Like the others this book is easy to read, yet without the feeling that it was dumbed down for a general audience. It's one of those books that I want to push on everyone and tell them to read it, right now. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      Everything you want to know on the global warming issue.
    • 5/5
      A discussion on global warming that covers an assortment of aspects, and presents an absolutely convincing argument that global warming is both real and far along. Topics covered included the earth’s climate history, the mechanisms of global warming, the effects present and future, Kyoto and other efforts to halt human harm of the atmosphere, and what Flannery sees as the solution. As a summary, the human-friendly earth is desperate for us to act now on global warning, not next year. And there are answers. One observation he makes really struck me: historically all cost estimates to reduce industrial pollution are largely overstated, often by more then twice the real cost. Whereas all cost estimates to clean up after pollution are enormously understated, often by an order of magnitude.Flannery is not an alarmist. He writes in an accessible manner, does a good job of putting various facts together to make his point. There is a lot to be learned here, and you don’t need to be a scientist to follow along and understand.Climate HistoryThe most interesting sections for me were on the mechanism causing global warming and the earth’s climate history. The later underlining the former. How interesting that Homo sapiens have existed for 150,000 years, and yet almost all technological advancement occurred within the last 10,000 years? What happened during those 1st 140,000 years? Flannery argues that climate happened. The ice ages and other naturally phenomena hindered humanity, driving it to the brink of extinction at least once. Then, over the last 10,000 years we’ve had one long summer of stable climate. Global Warming MechanismsAs for the mechanism, Flannery begins by giving a nice clear explanation. He tries to cover the latest research through 2005, and includes many critical findings that only date to within a couple years before the book was published. Global warming has been discussed for a long time, but we are still trying to understand the mechanisms. And some of the most critical and convincing research is very recent. The problem is that the climate is very complex, with many features offsetting others. Sometimes a feature that would seem the drive the climate one way actually is critical to driving it the other. The key features are the positive feedbacks. This is where warming triggers an event which then causes more warming. For example warming melts ice caps. The ice, which reflects large amounts of the suns energy, is them replaced by sea water or something else that reflects a great deal less of it. Unfortunately it seemed to me that this explanation stopped a little too early, leaving some unanswered questions. At least I was still confused and ready for more clarification. Alas it didn’t come. The Effects Present and FutureI want to say that these sections were horrifying. But there are so many examples that my eyes glaze over after awhile. I get the point, global warming is doing bad things, species are going extinct as a tremendous rate, places like Australia are losing critical rainfall. Yes, OK…no no no, please not another example. But, what is fascinating here are the two climate windows we’ve passed through recently that are well documented: 1976 & 1998. Global climates shifted dramatically these two years, and did not return. Some threshold was passed beginning positive feedback loops towards a warmer climate. This should be enough to get our attention that climate is changing for the warmer and will continue to do so if we don’t reduce emissions. Kyoto and Other Efforts to Halt Human Harm of the AtmosphereIt’s a sad reality that industry is successfully confusing the picture, and undermining popular understanding of globally warming. I don’t recall any stunning details here, Flannery just points out the obvious as he tries to explain why the United States and Australia haven’t ratified Kyoto – an underwhelming and partial answer to global warming. To quote: “It is of paramount importance to understand that the Kyoto Protocol is the only international treaty in existence created to combat climate change. For those who urge abandonment or who criticize Kyoto, there are two questions: What do you propose to replace Kyoto with, and how do you propose to secure international agreement for your alternatives? ”The SolutionSign Kyoto. Begin taxing carbon emission and investing in all alternatives to coal and oil. As we invest, the costs of alternatives will come down. There are several, including wind, solar and nuclear energy, and all need to be used at some level. And once emissions are taxed, better ways will be found to replace coal and oil. Flannery seems most interested in the solution and the actions we can take. His makes a good point that there is a lot we can do now - and the costs of doing them probably aren't all that high. Acting now would make a huge difference.
    • 3/5
      Inconvenient truth in expanded detail is an apt description for this book. The book format can include a lot more information than a movie so if you want to know more about global warming than what is in Al Gore's movie, this is a good place to start. The author is from Australia so that country gets more coverage than one would otherwise expect. Nevertheless, the subject of global warming is well covered. The book was first published in 2001 and updated in 2006 so it may becoming a bit date...more Inconvenient truth in expanded detail is an apt description for this book. The book format can include a lot more information than a movie so if you want to know more about global warming than what is in Al Gore's movie, this is a good place to start. The author is from Australia so that country gets more coverage than one would otherwise expect. Nevertheless, the subject of global warming is well covered. The book was first published in 2001 and updated in 2006 so it may becoming a bit dated in a quickly expanding subject area. Read in April, 2008
    • 4/5
      Flannery makes a very convincing case for global warming and looming climate change. The book is well written with a lot of science explained behind the terms we came to use every day and the politics that governs how we go about our environment. The scienceis very well explained and detailed; just detailed enough and not too detailed to bog one down.