Show of numbers. It's a classic driver. People are more likely to pay attention to something if they see a large amount of numbers dedicated to it and while social media and news already reported a bit on climate change, this multiplied that by 10. More exposure means more focus and more awareness.
The downside is that you are right about division. Many people get pissed off by the protesters and end up going the other way.
I also think this thread is a reflection of the problems with the way the climate change debate has gone more generally.
Everyone picks their ideological side and then argues for it without trying to find any common ground.
The other problem is that I think it's fairly well established that many scientists are less than impartial when it comes to climate studies, so it has become very difficult (as a casual observer) to know who to listen to and who not to listen to.
I for one am willing to concede that the climate changes (I don't think anyone believes that climate patterns like wind, rain, sun, temperature or humidity remain static).
I'm also willing to concede that human beings have added pollutants to the environment throughout the last hundred years in particular.
The questions in my mind are:
- Have humans changed the global climate through emissions? How has this been tested given that it appears the global climate has changed for hundreds of thousands of years.
- If the climate is changing, what will the result be? Many people claimed we would run out of food but actually the opposite has happened (global poverty has never been lower), I also understand there have been fewer hurricanes/major storms in most parts of the world.
- Why have scientists consistently been wrong when it comes to forecasting temperature changes as a result of global emissions? Also, why does every forecast seemed to be biased towards warming instead of cooling - does this indicate that scientists are biased if they seem to all forecast incorrectly in one direction only?