Climate doom-mongers like the Climate Council’s Professor Will Steffen have got a lot to answer for. Many science-challenged innocents believe this apocalyptic nonsense, putting their liberty and even lives at risk gluing themselves to highways, bridges and coal port reclaimer/stackers, not to mention Picassos and van Goghs. What a sad business.

Case in point: Violet Coco, 32, who’s just spent ten days in Silverwater Women’s Prison for shutting down a peak-hour lane of the Harbour Bridge last April. A stern Sydney magistrate on December 2 gave her 15 months jail and no parole for eight months – and no bail either. A District Court appeal over bail got her released on December 13 pending her sentencing appeal next March. Violet’s manifesto included (my emphasis):

In 2021, I spoke with esteemed climate scientist and academic professor Will Steffen, who told me: “Massive floods, fires and heatwaves are sending us a clear message.[1] On our present trajectory, we risk heading into a collapse of our globalised civilisation and a precipitous drop in human population — put simply, hell on earth. But we can avoid this disastrous future if we change the way we think, live our lives and interact with the rest of the living world.”

Steffen, in the course of similar doom-crying in a recent co-authored Nature paper, came a gutser, necessitating quite an epochal correction.[2] Not to mention another (uncorrected) mis-statement in the paper: “Ocean heatwaves have led to mass coral bleaching and to the loss of half of the shallow-water corals on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.” A miracle! The dead coral has risen and coral cover is now at record extent. In that paper Steffen is pretty restrained, compared with another in which he glumly predicted:

“The ultimate drivers of the Anthropocene if they continue unabated through this century, may well threaten the viability of contemporary civilization and perhaps even the future existence of Homo sapiens.”[3]

Steffen for decades has been leading Australia’s troupe of climate-model believers in that impending “hell on earth” stuff, and setting the tone for government action on climate and carbon taxes as well as (in my opinion) a perverse court judgement against the Whitehaven coal  expansion.[4] The urgings by activist scientists have now culminated in Prime Minister Albanese’s legally-enshrined, ruinously costly and pointless net zero fantasy for 2050.[5]

Meanwhile Prof  Steffen, Tim “Wonthaggi” Flannery’s Climate Council, the Academy of Science (now more authoritarian than an authority), the activist-infested IPCC, and multitudes of academic soothsayers ignore the real-life evidence. The UAH satellite data show that Australia has had no warming for 10 years and five months and that the globe has not warmed for eight years and one month. The warming trend since the satellites started in January 1979 is a mere 0.13degC per decade, or a harmless – indeed so far beneficial – 1.3degC per century.[6] [7]

The climate models on which the futuristic scare is based run hot compared with past decades’ observed temperatures – the IPCC’s 2013 Report admitted in a perplexed way that 111 of 114 runs of their best models exaggerate warming.[8] The latest check last October by UAH’s Dr Roy Spencer found that 36 standard models have on average forecast nearly double the actual fifty-year US summer temperature trend recorded by NOAA.

The doom-criers ignore the advice from the great physicist Richard Feynman that their first duty as scientists is to challenge their own pet ideas, e.g. by acknowledging and accounting for the satellite temperature read-outs and over-heated models.[9]

Of course, the glue-babies of Extinction Rebellion and its offshoots continue to imagine the activist academics represent “the science”. I started this piece with intent to satirise but I’ve found the protestors instead to be pitiable. How cruel are those science-wallahs who’ve inspired them to such fanatical self-sacrifice? So here’s a couple of protestor pen-portraits: Bonnie Cassen and Violet Coco.

All about Bonnie.

From Gerringong NSW, Bonnie’s among the global set now attacking famous artworks to “raise climate awareness”. She’s a mother of three, an “earth warrior” and Greens backer, a community newspaper editor, a Family Dispute Resolution Practitioner, a hater of capitalism and sadly, undergoing chemotherapy for advanced breast cancer. She intends to spend her remaining days “living with incurable cancer fighting to protect the planet”, she says.

 She gets her inspirations from “listening to the experts”. Nice job, “experts”. Bonnie and a female pal, as members of Stop Fossil Fuel Subsidies or #StopFFS, glued themselves to Andy Warhol’s Campbell Soup artwork in Canberra’s National Gallery. It was November 8, during the COP 27 gabfest at Sharm el Sheikh. Someone added graffiti with blue ink. The attacks were all on the glass shield not the art itself. Bonnie explained,

 Andy Warhol depicted consumerism gone mad in this iconic series. And now we have capitalism gone mad. Families are having to choose between medicine and food for their children while fossil fuel companies return record profits… We must act urgently to avoid the worst effects of climate breakdown and large-scale extinctions. Is art really more important than human life?

She complained,

Security grabbed my lymphedema arm very forcefully, and ripped my glued hand off the painting. I reminded them that I have cancer and undergoing chemotherapy so am very fragile but that did not stop their behaviours. They justified their behaviours saying it’s ‘in the Act’.

They pushed me out of the building and forced me to leave the area. I acknowledge what I have done and I am willing to risk the legal consequences.

That same day Plod arrested her at Braddon’s Sweet Bones vegan café. Her postings continued so I assume she stayed at liberty.

Bonnie’s #StopFFS is part of the A22 Network which targets artworks in what it calls “a mad dash to try and save humanity”. A22 is part-funded, ironically, by the Climate Emergency Fund which is funded by the heirs to Getty/Rockefeller oil fortunes, now virtue-signalling with $US30m-plus handouts to green-left protestor groups. The New York Times reported this (paywalled) last August 10.[10]

Bonnie’s stunt followed another in Canberra by #StopFFS involving Julie Marsh – described as a mother and WA farmer and  volunteer firefighter. She glued herself to a painting at the Suffragette’s Exhibition in Federal Parliament, saying, “Just as the suffragettes were hated at the time, we do not expect everyone to like our tactics.” She’s right about that.

All about Violet Coco

A few years back, Violet Coco of Lismore was operating a small events management business, studying management and philosophy at university, running a community theatre group and helping her sister raise a child. Like Bonnie, she’s vegan-inclined, posting two months ago about the evils of cow’s milk: “Only the patriarchy would invent repeatedly raping a woman, killing her baby, so he can drink their milk.”

She turned climate activist after the 2019 bushfire haze blanketed Sydney – overlooking the science findings that, globally, wildfires have actually subsided.[11] (Glue-babies like to cite former fire-chief Greg Mullins of the Climate Council spruiking the bogus nexus that bushfires = climate).

Violet’s media stardom began on August 10 last year. The timing was a day or two after the IPCC’s report, which the UN’s socialist Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described in Gillard-like hyberbole as “Code Red for Humanity”.

Wearing her Extinction Rebellion hat (since discarded for more fashionable models such as Fireproof Australia), Violet and seven early-morning colleagues took a pram to federal parliament’s entry. She turned the pram into a bonfire supposedly symbolising how the Morrison government was damning all future generations, then she glued herself to the pavement.[12] In her view, Morrison’s team “ has been captured by the fossil fuel industry and the Murdoch empire.”

Violet (below) told reporters filming the made-for-TV melodrama, “We have to save our kids… I want to be a mum, but I can’t be because the government is refusing to act on the climate.”

She had little fear of the courts, which she said were “very sympathetic” and agreed that the government was “failing in its [climate] duty”. The courts were recognising how the protestors were on the right side of history. Hence the no-convictions, minimal fines of $100-200 for “premeditated crimes” and absence of bail conditions, she said.

She wasn’t wrong, although she spent 16 days in lockup in lieu of bail. She then got a six-month good-behaviour bond, if breached incurring $400 fines. Four of her protest colleagues got a $20 fine each (there goes a round of cappuccinos) and three got let off. It had been Violet’s fourth arrest that fortnight and somewhere round 20th arrest to August 2021. Alarmist scientists have convinced her that without zero emissions, “billions of people will die, and the habitability of our planet is at stake.” Her rebellion, forestalling Steffen’s “hell on earth”, would echo the suffragettes, Gandhi and the US Civil Rights Movement, she said.
She backs the idea of Extinction Rebellion founder Roger Hallam, who said that a small fraction of people, e.g. 3.5 per cent, can create social tipping points if they are radical and self-sacrificial enough. (Hallam’s author credits include, “Escape from the Neoliberal Higher Education Prison: A Proposal for a New Digital Communist University.)”

Violet told Crikey!, “This climate and ecological crisis will soon drive extinction events, food shortages, sea level rise and extreme weather, threatening every aspect of life as we understand it.” She told the sympathetic Sydney Criminal Lawyers blog ,

On a personal note, the reason I am able to donate so much time to this is because at 30-years old, I am at a time in my life when I am supposed to be having kids.

That would be what I am dedicating my life to, but I feel too afraid to have children. I don’t think it’s the right thing to do: to bring kids into this world with the current trajectory of hell on earth.

So, I’m putting all the energy that I would be putting into my own children into protecting the children that are already here.

Her pram-fuelled celebrity was nothing compared with the media love-in when she was arrested for blocking a southbound lane of the Harbour Bridge with her delivery truck on April 13. She climbed onto the cab-top and live-streamed herself lighting a distress flare, while two pals glued themselves to the road. Morning peak-hour traffic banked up for 25 minutes, including a gridlocked ambulance with blue and red lights flashing.[13]

After 84 days of home detention, she pleaded guilty to a fistful of charges on December 2, the fruit of tough new legislation passed by the NSW Coalition government and Opposition on April 1. The Magistrate, Allison Hawkins, proved an exception to Violet’s previous sympathisers on the bench. Hawkins spoke of Violet’s “childish stunts” and “selfish, emotional actions” disrupting the citizenry: “You are not a political prisoner, you are a criminal.” Warming up, the doughty Magistrate said there was a  need for a “significant element of deterrence” and slapped Violet with that 15 months’ term, and eight months non-parole.

Showing unusual guts for a Liberal, Premier Perrottet described Violet’s sentence as “pleasing to see”. Violet’s uncle, Alister Henskens, is Perrottet’s Science Minister and he also welcomed Violet’s sentence, proving that blood is thinner than water.

Violet’s co-accused, Jay Larbalastier, dubbed a philosophy student, escaped a jail sentence and then complained about “the judicial system working exactly as intended, protecting the rights of extractive industries in order to make obscene profits.”

After Magistrate Hawkins denied bail, Violet spent the next ten days in a 4mx2m concrete cell at Silverwater Women’s. No visitors, seven days in isolation and no exercise almost round-the-clock because the guards happened to be on strike. (Hat tip to Wendy Bacon for the detail). Violet told The Guardian, “I could see the birds outside through the grate in my window and that kept my spirits up.” For good measure she claimed to Crikey!: “It’s stressful, resource-intensive, scary and the police are violent. They refuse to feed me, refused to give me toilet paper and have threatened me with sexual violence.”

Her Facebook fans applauded her as precious, loved and worthy, and one insisted that fossil fuel companies were “actively trying to murder millions of people”. An unkind commenter told her, “Excellent. Maybe you can glue your hand to the cell floor.”

Hundreds of green-black-left groups, like ACF, Oxfam, Socialist Alliance, First Nations’ and whatevers, Sydney City Council, Knitting Nanas (XR), Free Julian Assange and civil liberties councils backed Violet and company, describing them as “peaceful protesters”. An unelected and unaccountable UN official was of course roped in to condemn the inhumanity. They all argue that you or I have a right to jam traffic and sabotage exports to make any (leftist) point we feel strongly about.[14]

At her bail appeal on December 12, Judge Timothy Gartelman released her pending a sentencing appeal on March 3.

Police charge sheets involving follow-on protestors at an unauthorised Sydney CBD march on June 27 suggest “peaceful” is the wrong word for some protestors. Police mention “abhorrent” behaviour including launching projectiles such as garbage bins and traffic signs, causing “significant disruption to peak hour traffic”. One protestor is alleged to have run at a police officer and thrown two empty milk crates. The man complained, “We’re good people and this is what you do to us. This is messed up – all we’ve done is listen to the scientists.” Great job, “scientists”.

Bonnie and Violet, you’ll one day maybe discover that climate models’ forecasts for 2100 are not worth a cracker . Meanwhile a pox on your mentors.

Tony Thomas’s latest book from Connor Court is now available: Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. For a copy ($35 including postage), email tthomas061@gmail.com.

[1] Globally, floods fires and heatwaves show no deteriorating trend, while casualties from such disasters have fallen 99% in the past century.

[2] Correction 09 April 2020: The figure ‘Too close for comfort’ in this Comment incorrectly synthesized and interpreted data from the IPCC. The graph labelled the temperatures as absolute, rather than rises; misrepresented the levels of risk; misinterpreted data as coming from a 2007 IPCC report; extrapolated the focus of a 2018 report; and was not clear about the specific sources of the data. The graphic has been extensively modified online to correct these errors.

[3] Will Steffen, et al., “The Anthropocene: Conceptual and Historical Perspectives,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 369, no. 1938 (2011): p862.

[4] Bromberg J. found about CO2 emissions:

“It is difficult to characterise in a single phrase the devastation that the plausible evidence presented in this proceeding forecasts for the Children. As Australian adults know their country, Australia will be lost and the World as we know it gone as well. The physical environment will be harsher, far more extreme and devastatingly brutal when angry. As for the human experience – quality of life, opportunities to partake in nature’s treasures, the capacity to grow and prosper – all will be greatly diminished. Lives will be cut short. Trauma will be far more common and good health harder to hold and maintain. None of this will be the fault of nature itself. It will largely be inflicted by the inaction of this generation of adults, in what might fairly be described as the greatest inter-generational injustice ever inflicted by one generation of humans upon the next.”

[5] China’s burgeoning coal emissions swamp everything that Australia might do.

[6] Moreover, a new study published in the Journal of Climate suggests the effect of carbon dioxide this century might be small when compared to natural climate variability. The researchers contend that recent temperature trends might indicate that there is no significant increase in global temperature due to greenhouse gas emissions. The author team is from Oxford University and US National Center for Atmospheric Research.

[7] And global wheat yields have tripled in the past 60 years.

[8] Chapter 9, text box 9.2, page 769.

[9] Guterres claims  (don’t laugh) that “we are on the highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.”

[10] “Aileen Getty, whose grandfather created Getty Oil, helped found the Climate Emergency Fund and has given it $1 million so far. The Equation Campaign started in 2020 with a $30 million pledge, to be distributed over 10 years, from two members of the Rockefeller family, Rebecca Rockefeller Lambert and Peter Gill Case. John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil in 1870 and became the country’s first billionaire.” The #StopFFS figure of $11.6b a year annual all-governmental subsidies to fossil fuels is nonsense attributable to the leftist Australia Institute.The Institute for example treats the federal fuel tax credit scheme ($8b last year) as a “subsidy”.

[11] Also see here, indicating the complexity of the issue.

[12] XR activists also sprayed red-paint messages on the building itself and on walls of The Lodge.

[13] #StopFFS ‘Blue Lights’ policy: our policy is, and has always been to move out of the way for ambulances and fire trucks with ‘blue lights’ on.

[14] Amnesty International Australia said, “The right to protest is a human right. No-one should be imprisoned for exercising this right, and Violet’s sentencing represents a concerning escalation in NSW’s crackdown on people’s right to protest, and that of others to address human rights abuses including climate inaction.”