Greta has a new book coming out, published by Penguin in the autumn, as both Mark Hodgson and Vinny Burgoo spotted. Her last book was slim in content, so Penguin printed it in large letters, a few lines per page. (Nothing to do with Greta’s diminutive size or literary output, since Penguin Science did the same thing with other books on the climate crisis by Professor Chris Rapley and Visiting Professor and Microsoft Blue Sky Thinker Stephen Emmott, the reason presumably being that Penguin’s Science climate publications are aimed at people whose last extended reading material was a Noddy book.)

Greta’s new book should be longer, given that it has a hundred authors. The Guardian, in it’s puff, lists them. They are:

Abrahm Lustgarten, Adriana de Palma, Alexander Popp, Alexandra Urisman Otto, Alice Garvey, Alice Larkin, Amitav Ghosh, Ana M. Vicedo-Cabrera, Andy Purvis, Annie Lowrey, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Ayisha Siddiqa, Beth Shapiro, Beverly Law, Bill McKibben, Bjørn H. Samset, Carlos Nobre, Christian Brand, Dave Goulson, David Wallace-Wells, Derek Macfadden, Disha A. Ravi, Drew Shindell, Elin Anna Labba, Elizabeth Kolbert, Erica Chenoweth, Eugene Linden, Felipe J. Colón-González, Friederike Otto, George Monbiot, Gidon Eshel, Glen Peters, Hans-Otto Pörtner, Hilda Flavia Nakabuye, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, Ina Maria Shikongo, Isak Stoddard, Jacqueline Patterson, Jason Hickel, Jennie C. Stephens , Jennifer A. Francis, Jennifer Soong, Jillian Anable, Joëlle Gergis, Johan Rockström, John Barrett, John Brownstein, Julia Arieira, Karin Kvale, Karl-Heinz Erb, Kate Marvel, Kate Raworth, Katharine Hayhoe, Keith W. Larson, Ketan Joshi, Kevin Anderson, Laura Verónica Muñoz, Lorraine Whitmarsh, Lucas Chancel, Margaret Atwood, Marshall Burke, Mauricio Santillana, Michael Clark, Michael Mann, Michael Oppenheimer, Michael Taylor, Mike Berners-Lee, Mitzi Jonelle Tan, Naomi Klein, Naomi Oreskes, Nathália Nascimento, Nicholas Stern, Nicki Becker, Niclas Hällström, Nina Schrank, Olúfémi O. Táíwò, Örjan Gustafsson, Paulo Ceppi, Per Espen Stoknes, Peter Brannen, Peter H. Gleick, Rebecca Wrigley, Ricarda Winkelmann, Rob Jackson, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Saleemul Huq, Samuel S. Myers, Sarah McGough, Seth Klein, Silpa Kaza, Simone Gingrich,Solomon Hsiang, Sonia Guajajara, Sonja Vermeulen, Stefan Rahmstorf, Stuart Capstick, Sunita Narain, Taikan Oki, Tamsin Edwards, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Thomas Piketty, Wanjira Mathai, Zeke Hausfather.

Three quarters of the names were unfamiliar to me, so I started researching the first ten names on the list.

Abrahm Lustgarten is an environmental reporter, with a focus at the intersection of business, climate and energy. His early investigation into the environmental and economic consequences of fracking received the George Polk award for environmental reporting, the National Press Foundation award for best energy writing, a Sigma Delta Chi award and was honored as finalist for the Goldsmith Prize. Before joining ProPublica in 2008, Lustgarten was a staff writer at Fortune. His work has appeared in Fortune,The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Scientific American, Wired, Salon, and Esquire, among other publications. He has a master’s in journalism from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Cornell.

Adriana de Palma is a Postdoctoral Research Assistant at the Natural History Museum and a data scientist with a focus on understanding biodiversity responses to anthropogenic drivers of change, including both land-use change and extreme weather events. She is interested in synthesising extensive carefully-collated databases to identify, and test the efficacy of, potential management practices and policy decisions at different scales to mitigate the impacts of global change on biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Alexander Popp is a Senior Scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and coordinates the development of the global land-use model ‘Model of Agricultural Production and its Impacts on the Environment’ (MAgPIE), which over the last years has evolved into one of the world’s leading integrated global land and water use modelling systems. He is ranked by Web of Science among the 1% most influential scientists in the world [and] was listed among the World’s forty most influential climate scientists on the Reuters Climate Hot-List.

Alexandra Urisman Otto is a Swedish journalist She was born in 1986. After completing a degree in Master of Laws at Lund University, she realized that practicing law would be too square, and that she needed a more creative career. Today she combines a life with young children and working as a journalist at Dagens Nyheter, where one of her tasks is to write about climate activist Greta Thunberg.

Alice Garvey is a PhD candidate based in the Sustainability Research Institute who previously worked at the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions (CREDS), modelling industrial emissions mitigation scenarios and carrying out a review of industrial decarbonisation policies to help inform the 6th Carbon Budget recommendations of the Climate Change Committee (CCC).

Alice Larkin is Head of the School of Engineering and a Professor in Climate Science & Energy Policy. Alice trained as an astrophysicist at the University of Leeds, did her PhD in climate modelling at Imperial College, joining the interdisciplinary Tyndall Centre to research conflicts between climate change and aviation.She was the lead Manchester investigator on a large consortium project funded by the EPSRC entitled ‘Shipping in Changing Climates’. She was also PI on a large EPSRC consortium project on the Water-Food-Energy Nexus and a Co-I on the UKERC project RACER.

Amitav Ghosh is an Indian writer, best known for his English language historical fiction. He has also written non-fiction works discussing topics such as colonialism and climate change. Ghosh famously withdrew his novel The Glass Palace from consideration for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, where it was awarded the best novel in the Eurasian section, citing his objections to the term “commonwealth” and the unfairness of the English language requirement specified in the rules. He lives in New York.

Ana M. Vicedo-Cabrera is head of a research group investigating epidemiology and climate change at the university of Bern. She has published 106 papers, including five in March, 2022, including “Comparison of weather station and climate reanalysis data for modelling temperature-related mortality” and “Suicides and ambient temperature in Switzerland: A nationwide time-series analysis.”

Andy Purvis leads the PREDICTS project (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems), which aims to model globally how local terrestrial biodiversity responds to human pressures and to use these models to project potential biodiversity futures under alternative scenarios of socioeconomic development. PREDICTS estimates the Biodiversity Intactness Index, the first indicator available on the Natural History Museum’s Biodiversity Trends Explorer. He was a Coordinating Lead Author on the first IPBES Global Assessment of biodiversity and ecosystem services, and scientific advisor on Sir David Attenborough’s documentary, “Extinction: The Facts”. Other research interests include phylogenetic comparative methods and macroevolution, often using macroperforate planktonic foraminifera as a model system.

Annie Lowrey is an American journalist who writes on politics and economic policy for The Atlantic.[3] Previously, Lowrey covered economic policy for the New York Times and prior to that was the Moneybox columnist for Slate. She graduated from Harvard University with a degree in English and American Literature. She is married to Ezra Klein, the co-founder of Vox and currently a columnist and podcast host at the New York Times.

That’s six scientists, (five of whom are into modelling, and one of whom synthesises carefully-collated data bases) three journalists, none of them with any relevant scientific qualifications, and a writer of historical novels. I know there are proper climate scientists among the other ninety, such as Marvel, Mann, Hayhoe, and Nonny-no. (Sorry, that’s just my spellcheck playing up.) But still, it doesn’t promise to be either a bunch of laughs or much of an insight into complex chaotic systems. Perhaps Ed Hawkins will draw us a nice rainbow on the cover.

(And if anyone would like to continue the research in the comments, we might well succeed in compiling the list of the hundred most boring people in the universe).