I consider the disruption, stupidity, and clear intent to be a public nuisance to warrant a greater deterrent than the original two years, yes.

I'd be more inclined towards leniency if they were, say, actively putting soup in people's petrol tanks than this utterly irrelevant stupidity, as at least the property destruction would be tangentially related to the pursuit of an arguably noble goal.

Their only crime was questioning the status quo.

Government policy? Lobbying has been active since the late 70's and not made enough progress. What approach do you suggest?

> How about if you're focusing on climate change, you target the causes of climate change? Shocking, I know.

So one of the causes of climate change was a Van Gogh painting, wasn't it ?

Calling them evil is much too far and cheapens the word to what it really means.

Logically, they've done no significant physical damage.

However, the damage is in the minds of the message recipients.

Their tactics don't work because they aren't choosing tactics based on effectiveness. Attention is all they care about, because they're narcissists.

> I don't agree that priceless art is above the importance of our planet or the lives of people.

This is just a false dichotomy. You don't, in general, have to choose between priceless art and the importance of our planet.

And if all their demands were met today - or let's say the UK ceases to exist today and doesn't emit anything anymore - how would that impact climate change?

Last time I checked the methods of measuring temperature via satellites was not percise enough to even account for that scenario. It's like stealing ten people's drinking water so that you can put out a big forest fire. Knowing it will not at all impact the forest fire but it will sure as hell make the ten people angry. And then celebrating yourself for doing something. It's beyond stupid.

They're almost as bad as the ones in Germany who glued themselves to the streets and then couldn't show up to court because they flew to Bali. These people are seriously something.

That's a pretty ridiculous argument for a couple of reasons.

1. Vandalism of art does nothing to advance dealing with high CO2 levels. The problems with CO2 have been widely reported. It is a major issue in most major democracies that comes up for debate in most major elections. So it is not going to do anything measurable to raise awareness of the issue.

2. The same argument works for anything that does less harm than our current CO2 levels. If I protested CO2 levels by going around slapping babies, would that be an acceptable form of protest? Slapping a few babies, even hard enough to cause some brain damage, causes less harm than CO2 levels being too high.

Associating your cause with vandals, criminals, thugs, obnoxious people, etc., will not help your cause. It'll hurt it.

There's a reason why businesses do not market their products that way.

I take the climate seriously and do my part to minimise how much of my footprint contributes to fucking around with the chemistry of our atmosphere. It's clear that changes to CO2 levels will change our climate in ways that will have global sociopolitical and socioeconomic consequences.

There is no reliable evidence[0] that CO2 has an effect on human cognition or on "society." High indoor CO2 levels aren't bad because of the CO2, it's bad because it's a marker of poor ventilation. And poor ventilation has many consequences for the chemical makeup of that air.

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32557862/

> With respect, when you say that, you sound like a basic asshole

So they can deface priceless art, but I’m an asshole for a sarcastic illustration of why their tactic of choice might be counterproductive to the cause? I’m ok with that.

Thank you for explaining to me how I shouldn’t disagree with these people. I found that really ironic.