Showing results by author "Tim Flannery" in All Categories

In New Guinea pidgin, "throwim way leg" means to kick out your leg on the first step of a long journey. Full of adventure, wit, and natural wonders, Flannery's narrative is just such a spectacular trip - a tour de force of travel, anthropology, and natural history.

In Europe: A Natural History, world-renowned scientist, explorer, and conservationist Tim Flannery applies the eloquent interdisciplinary approach he used in his ecological histories of Australia and North America to the story of Europe. He begins 100 million years ago, when the continents of Asia, North America, and Africa interacted to create an island archipelago that would later become the Europe we know today. It was on these ancient tropical lands that the first distinctly European organisms evolved.

When it comes to the natural world, Australia is home to a disproportionately large share of the world's riches. That means we Australians are caretakers of a unique natural heritage in a land which tolerates few mistakes. So how are we doing? In Quarterly Essay 48 Tim Flannery says: we're often failing nature. In the clash between money and conservation, money usually wins.

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.

Tim Flannery’s first major book since The Weather Makers charts the history of life on our planet. Here on Earth, which draws its points of departure from Darwin and Wallace, Lovelock and Dawkins, is an extraordinary exploration of evolution and sustainability. Our success as a species has had disastrous effects on many of the Earth’s ecosystems and could lead to our downfall. But equally, Flannery argues, we are now equipped as never before to explore our true relationship with the planet on which our biological, economic and cultural futures depend.

Tim Flannery's international best seller The Weather Makers changed minds and hearts about global warming. We Are the Weather Makers is a concise and revised edition that allows listeners of all ages to learn the facts about climate change. In this passionate book Tim Flannery writes about cyclones and droughts, about coral reefs and polar bears, about wind energy and nuclear power. He reminds us that climate connects us all, from the Arctic to the Outback. And our climate is influenced by how we choose to live - how we use our fuels, our water and our land.

A decade ago, Tim Flannery's number-one international best seller, The Weather Makers, was one of the first books to break the topic of climate change out into the general conversation. Today, Earth's climate system is fast approaching a crisis. Political leadership has not kept up, and public engagement with the issue of climate change has declined. Opinion is divided between technological optimists and pessimists who feel that catastrophe is inevitable.

Tim Flannery is one of the world's most influential scientists, credited with discovering more species than Darwin. In Among the Islands, Flannery recounts a series of expeditions he made at the dawn of his career to the strange tropical islands of the South Pacific, a great arc stretching nearly 4,000 miles from the postcard perfection of Polynesia to some of the largest, highest, most ancient, and most rugged islands on Earth.

The best-selling author of The Weather Makers returns to the subject of climate change with a thought-provoking and powerful argument for immediate global action and a wide range of innovative, deeply pragmatic ideas to help solve the crisis.

Tench, a humble captain-lieutenant of the marines, arrived on the First Fleet, and with his characteristic understanding, humanity, and eye for detail, recorded the first four years of European settlement. This is a classic, lovingly edited and introduced by Tim Flannery, author of the best-selling The Future Eaters, Throwim Way Leg, and The Weather Makers.

A place of exceptional diversity, rapid change and high energy, for the past 100 million years Europe has literally been at the crossroads of the world. By virtue of its geology and geography, evolution in Europe proceeds faster than elsewhere. The continent has absorbed wave after wave of immigrant species over the millennia, taking them in, transforming them and sometimes hybridising them. Flannery's exploration of the nature of Europe reveals a compelling intellectual drama, with a cast of heroic researchers whose discoveries have changed our understanding of life itself.

In New Guinea Pidgin, Thrown Way Leg means to go on a journey and it is also Tim Flannery's invitation to join him on his breathtaking adventure through the jungles of Papua New Guinea and Irian Jaya. Flannery meets skilled hunters, befriends shaman, climbs mountains never before scaled by Europeans, discovers new species and stumbles across the giant bones of extinct marsupials. You will never think about the bird-shaped island to our north the same way again.

Sometime this century, after 4 billion years, some of Earth's regulatory systems will pass from control through evolution by natural selection, to control by human intelligence. Will humanity rise to the challenge? This landmark essay by Tim Flannery is about sustainability, our search for it in the 21st century, and the impact it might have on the environmental threats that confront us today. Flannery discusses in detail three potential solutions to the most pressing of the sustainability challenges: climate change.

Have you ever heard about the cookie-cutter shark, which bites out cookie-shaped morsels of flesh from much larger animals than itself? Or the goblin shark, which was thought to have become extinct 100 million years ago until a living specimen was discovered in 1898? And did you know that the whale shark has jaws the size of a 12-year-old child? The earth is home to over one billion sharks across 500 different species, and there's so much to learn about these ancient rulers of the ocean!

There's so much more to elephants than their enormous size! Have you heard about their excellent memory or their adorable sense of humour? Did you know that they actually walk on their tippy toes? And wait till you see who their cousins are – you're in for a surprise! Elephants can live until the age of 70 and are Earth's most intelligent giants, with incredible communication and relationship-building abilities.

There's more to snakes than them being venomous and cold-blooded. Did you know a snake can still grow even when it hasn't eaten for months? Or that snakes have flexible jaws that allow them to eat prey that's much larger than them? Or that snakes are masters of disguise? With more than 3700 sub-species around the world, there's a snake to delight and frighten every kind of listener, from Australia's deadly Eastern brown snake to the green anaconda, the heaviest snake in the world. Not to mention the teeny-tiny Barbados thread snake, which is half as long as a pencil!

Extraordinary Elephants: There's so much more to elephants than their enormous size! Have you heard about their excellent memory or their adorable sense of humour? Did you know that they actually walk on their tippy toes? And wait till you see who their cousins are – you're in for a surprise! Jiggliest Jellyfish: Did you know that jellyfish can thrive in waters that would suffocate other sea creatures? Or that some jellyfish can flash different colours from purple to green? Or that they have the world's most powerful venom?

You might think that there's not much to jellyfish, but this audiobook will make you think again. Did you know that jellyfish can thrive in waters that would suffocate other sea creatures? Or that some jellyfish can flash different colours from purple to green? Or that they have the world's most powerful venom? There is even a jellyfish that is immortal! There are more than 2000 kinds of jellyfish, and they're one of the few creatures that will thrive in warmer waters due to climate change – yikes!

Imagine a ferocious marine hunter up to 20 metres long, weighing twice as much as a humpback whale and ten times more than Tyrannosaurus rex. With jaws that open three metres wide, crammed with 276 serrated fangs, it can bite down with the greatest force of any animal that has ever lived. This is the Megalodon, and it once existed 3 million years ago. Acclaimed conservationist, palaeontologist and explorer Tim Flannery and his scientist daughter Emma tell the story of this enthralling great shark for the first time - what we know about where and how it lived, bred, hunted and died.

Thirteen plays about human connection, from some of BBC Radio's best writers exploring love, family, romances and life's ups and downs. This diverse collection of stories centres around family dynamics, relationships both romantic and platonic, and the diverse ways ordinary people navigate the vicissitudes of everyday life. Ranging from modern fairy tales to coming-of-age dramas, they feature a wide variety of styles, and are scripted by an array of writers from award-winning dramatists to first-time authors.