jonathanwatts
@jonathanwatts · Altamira, Brasil · joined 08 May 2008
Amazon-based author of The Many Lives of James Lovelock. Global environment writer @Guardian. Founder @Sumaumajornal & @Amazon_RJF. Mostly on BlueSky 🦋
27 363Followers
1 938Following
12 193Posts total
28KViews on collected posts
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@jonathanwatts Yes carried a journalistic stiletto (always aimed at the powerful, not the public) behind his smile and humour.
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Paul Brown filed the last of his many thousands of Guardian stories from a hospital bed. It was a typically trenchant reflection on his decades covering the environment that ended with a critique of the nuclear industry, a subject close to his heart.
https://t.co/Hbt3386jDr
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RIP Paul Brown, a mentor, friend and journalistic hero.
Quiet-spoken but dogged, he was an inspiration for me and so many other environmental reporters.
He and John Vidal pioneered coverage of the climate, nature and energy at The Guardian.
https://t.co/KKPMnp5wCg
1.5K views · 16 likes
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What an incredible human being.
RIP Dolly Parton.
https://t.co/M9RNhvLA0C
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“This may be the best biography I’ve ever read”
A selection of goodreads reviews of The Many Lives of James Lovelock: Science, Secrets and Gaia Theory. https://t.co/mcnQkBzynh
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Threatening thaw: climate professor on heatwave risks to permafrost
Prof Gustaf Hugelius warns wildfires could accelerate release of methane and carbon as vast regions approach irreversible thresholds
Latest Q&A by me in tipping point series.
https://t.co/tPzvQdEnHn
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@RobGMacfarlane “Jim Lovelock was always full of surprises – and wow, a few more pop up here! A fascinating picture of an astonishing life”
-@richardabetts , MBE, Head of Climate Impacts Research in the Met Office Hadley Centre
21/21 🙏🏻
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@RobGMacfarlane "A wonderful book. it captures the friend and mentor that I knew. It also taught me a few things I didn’t know about him.”
- TIM LENTON, Chair in Climate Change and Earth System Science at the University of Exeter
20/21
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@RobGMacfarlane ‘Superbly written… Watts calls his approach an "anti-biography", as he moves beyond the lone genius to construct a vision of an individual and a theory embedded in a more complex ecology…a significant contribution to ecological thought.”
- MELANIE CHALLENGER, How
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@RobGMacfarlane “I couldn’t put it down…Just as a master portrait records much more than a visual appearance, Jim emerges like a verbal hologram from the text.” CHRIS RAPLEY, CBE, former director of the Science Museum.
18/21
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‘Utterly fascinating – Jonathan Watts has turned Lovelock's greatest idea into literary form, giving us a Gaian biography in which Lovelock's discoveries are understood as always occurring in relation – to people, to places and to the Earth itself.’ @RobGMacfarlane
17/21
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Gaia’s origins (in a military-industrial love affair) may shock some greens but they show there is far more to the theory than one man or outdated New Age ideas.
If a living Earth can appeal to left and right, science and religion, it has lessons for today.
16/21
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The Geology Society awarded Lovelock its highest honour and commended him for opening up a whole new field of study, Earth System Science. This is the basis for the world’s climate computer models.
15/21
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British philosopher Mary Midgley and Canadian biologist Ford Doolittle said Gaia Theory was an alternative to a purely mechanistic understanding of life.
US philosopher David Abram said Lovelock’s link between life and the atmosphere showed we live in, not on, the world
14/21
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I was astonished by much of what I found. But is this history still relevant today?
Absolutely.
French philosopher Bruno Latour said Lovelock was as significant a figure as Galileo…
https://t.co/RHPlRlhqAV
13/21
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Among the surprises was Lovelock’s affair in NASA with US analyst Dian Hitchcock, which helped to change humanity’s understanding of life on Earth.
It also underscores the challenges faced by women in science.
12/21
https://t.co/j6siTWWT12
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Lovelock testimony and 10,000s of documents reveal influences that formed his character and theories.
In that sense this is a Gaian anti-biography in which each chapter is about a relationship rather than just a stage in the trajectory of an individual.
11/21
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But the influence of Lovelock and origins of Gaia are not widely understood because much of his work was hidden beneath the Official Secrets Act, corporate confidentiality and personal confidences.
At the end of his 103-year life, he opened up in 80+hours of interviews
10/21
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Gaia offered something for everyone:
The right loved the self regulation
The left liked the emphasis on interdependence
New age religions loved hint of a greater power
Scientists ran with the biosphere-atmosphere link
Industry liked Lovelock’s technology focus
9/21
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Lovelock struggled to reconcile industry & nature most of his life, most famously with the Gaia Theory.
This saw the Earth as a living organism that self regulates its temperature, salinity & nutrients.
Life didn’t merely adapt to the environment, it also shaped it.
8/21
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His big breakthrough was the invention of the world’s most sensitive chemical monitoring device, the Electron Capture Detector
This detected molecules and atoms at the level of one in a trillion - equivalent to finding one drop of vermouth in 125 million gallons of gin.
6/21
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- Advising NASA in the search for life on Mars
- Working as a “Mini Q” for the British secret services, MI5 and MI6 during the Cold War
- Helping to persuade Margaret Thatcher that the environment was a priority
5/21
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This took him to several frontlines of modern science:
- Warning Shell that fossil fuels destabilise the climate in the 1960s
- Pioneering studies that led to the discovery of ozone hole in the 1970s
- Co-developing the Gaia Theory, which prefigured Earth System Science
4/21
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It’s a tale of how love, loneliness, self-doubt, political manipulation, military exigencies, corporate fear, and creative friendships shape world-changing ideas.
But most of all it’s a story of discovery…
2/21
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James Lovelock was a reclusive inventor and intellectual explorer who was driven by a yearning for knowledge.
An extraordinary polymath, he mastered chemistry, biology, medicine, cryobiology (he used to freeze & reanimate hamsters), exobiology & climatology…
3/21
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This is the week! After four years’s of research and writing, my book, The Many Lives of James Lovelock: Science, Secrets and Gaia Theory finally hits the shelves.
It explores a century of science and environmental thinking through the life and relationships of one man... 🧵 ht
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Against accounts of the same size
6 posts from the last 90 days, next to the 10K–100K follower range. below its peers on both reach and engagement.
Median views662this account924median for 10K–100K
Reach, %2.42%this account3.62%median for 10K–100K
Engagement, %1.05%this account1.52%median for 10K–100K
| Metric | This account | Median for 10K–100K | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median views per post | 662 | 924 | 0.72× |
| Reach (views ÷ followers) | 2.42% | 3.62% | 0.67× |
| Engagement rate | 1.05% | 1.52% | 0.69× |
Others in this range → Compare with another account → How these benchmarks are built →
Growth & engagement
How the posts we collected actually performed: views and reaction rate post by post, what the audience did with them, and where the follower count goes.
Views per post
7213 Sep
71
73
81
128
303
781
14917 Oct
68520 Aug
63924 Aug
69425 Aug
1.5K27 Aug
178
25
Last 14 collected posts, oldest on the left. The scale is logarithmic: one post can outrun the rest a hundred times over.
Engagement rate per post
2.78%13 Sep
1.41%
2.74%
1.23%
0.78%
0.33%
0.51%
3.36%17 Oct
1.17%20 Aug
0.94%24 Aug
0.72%25 Aug
1.58%27 Aug
0.56%
12.00%
Reactions — likes, reposts, replies and quotes — divided by views. Median for 10K–100K accounts is 1.52%.
What the audience does
Likes63.1%130 in total
Reposts13.1%27 in total
Replies15.0%31 in total
Quotes2.4%5 in total
Bookmarks6.3%13 in total
Share of every reaction we collected for this account. Replies mean argument, reposts mean endorsement, bookmarks mean the post was worth keeping.
The follower curve appears once this account has two daily snapshots — we take one a day, and this one is on its first.
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