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A LOAD OF BOLLOCKS? The Trillion Dollar Climate Scare

The cover’s sheep in sunglasses, holding the Daily Panic (“Planet doomed by 2050!”) on top of a melting globe

At ten she clicked on one headline and spent the next twenty years waiting for the world to end. Then she started checking.

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Daily Panic

From the cover’s Daily Panic: Planet doomed by 2050! Melting everything. Extreme anything. Act now or else.

Her story · 1:56

Two minutes. One click.

I went to university because I wanted to help save the planet. I certainly didn’t expect to end up questioning whether it needed saving in the first place.
Anika SweetlandClimate scientist and former energy advisor

The story

It started with a click.

Twenty-seven years of headlines, in the order she believed them. Every line below is Anika’s own, from the book.

  1. Perth, Western Australia

    Chapter OneWe’re All Going To Die

    1999, Perth, Western Australia

    I had no reason to believe the world was anything other than beautiful, enormous and waiting for me.

    I clicked.

    One expert was warning of just 30 years. That was different. Thirty years wasn’t some unimaginable point in the future. I would only be forty.

    You’re not supposed to hand it in until the end of term.
    Ms Chin, handed thirty printed pages the next morning

  2. Perth, a bedroom floor

    Chapter TwoNo Matter What You Do, There Will Still Be Consequences!

    2008, Perth, a bedroom floor

    By 2008, I was nineteen and sufficiently disturbed about the impending collapse of civilisation that I had begun cutting climate-change articles out of newspapers.

    ABC News10 March 2008

    Oceanographer Warns Of Rising Sea Level Risk

    ABC News21 February 2008

    Aust ‘Most Vulnerable’ To Climate Change: Garnaut

    ABC Science6 March 2008

    Climate Impact in Australia

    I cut it out.

    It had the appearance of a detective trying to solve a murder. Except the victim was the planet.

  3. University of Western Australia

    Chapter FourClimate Scientist Training Camp

    2009, University of Western Australia

    I carefully laid my pens and ruler out in front of me and took my seat directly in the middle of the front row. I wasn’t going to miss a thing.

    Front row.

    Honestly, it was astonishing how difficult it was to get people interested in their own extinction.

    Do you know we’re in the middle of the sixth mass extinction?
    Anika, at a house party, about one in the morning

  4. London

    Chapter TwelveWelcome To The Future

    2019, London

    One sunny evening, a notification popped up on my phone and stopped me in my tracks.

    A trillion pounds?

    I made a mental note to investigate the ins and outs of renewable energy properly when I had some free time.

  5. Lockdown, London

    Chapter ThirteenThe Pollution Stays in China

    2020, Lockdown, London

    The economy was switched off at the wall. For the first time in my adult life, I had nowhere particularly pressing to be.

    So, I started reading.

    I had so many tabs open that closing one felt like destroying evidence.

  6. Hampshire, England

    Chapter TwentyThe Speech That Broke Me

    2026, Hampshire, England

    I found my old lecture notes. There they were. The graphs. The models. The predictions.

    I thought somebody had checked.

    No one had threatened me. All they had done was teach me.

So she asked the one question she had never dared to ask.

Whatifitwasall…A LOAD OF BOLLOCKS?

Here’s what she found out.

Cover of A LOAD OF BOLLOCKS? The Trillion Dollar Climate Scare by Anika Sweetland

The book

She studied climate science to save the world. Then she started checking.

Anika Sweetland grew up in Perth knowing exactly how the world was going to end, and roughly when. She cut the headlines out of the newspaper, took the middle seat of the front row in a climate science degree and built her whole life around saving the planet.

Part memoir, part investigation, A LOAD OF BOLLOCKS? retraces the warnings that shaped her childhood, her studies and her career, and the discoveries that made her question a worldview she had once accepted wholeheartedly. It asks a provocative but deeply personal question: what happens when someone trained to fear climate catastrophe begins checking the predictions for herself?

It is honest, irreverent and frequently very funny. Climate change is a serious subject. Anika doesn’t think that means it has to be discussed without humour.

Publisher
Free Speech Press
Foreword
Professor William Happer
Paperback
ISBN 978-1-918396-49-2
Ebook
ISBN 978-1-918396-50-8
Publication
1 November 2026 · Pre-order now

From the last chapter

It took me twenty-seven years,

  1. 01a climate-science degree,
  2. 02a near-death experience,
  3. 03a government energy strategy,
  4. 04a move across the world,
  5. 05several hundred newspaper articles,
  6. 06an unfortunate amount of purple stationery,
  7. 07a global pandemic,
  8. 08a Chinese radioactive-waste lake,
  9. 09a trillion-pound climate policy,
  10. 10an international conference
  11. 11and one extremely illuminating email from a Princeton physicist

to find my way back to her.

The ten-year-old in the eucalyptus tree. Perth, 1999.

Contents

Twenty-two chapters. One very long assignment.

In 1999 she had six weeks to research a problem from the headlines. She handed in thirty pages the next morning. This is the rest of the report.

  1. 01We’re All Going To Die
  2. 02No Matter What You Do, There Will Still Be Consequences!
  3. 03My Plan to Save Mankind
  4. 04Climate Scientist Training Camp
  5. 05Australia: Climate Villain
  6. 06Computer Says We’re Fucked!
  7. 07The Party of Doom
  8. 08A Global Problem Requires a Global Solution
  9. 09Eco-Anxiety
  10. 10The Girl Who Lived
  11. 11My Island of Broken Dreams
  12. 12Welcome To The Future
  13. 13The Pollution Stays in China
  14. 14From China With Love
  15. 15Out of Stock: We Do Not Manufacture This Product Here. Sorry.
  16. 16It is All Very Black and White, Thank you Mr Brown
  17. 17The Story Before Climate Change
  18. 18Checking the Receipts
  19. 19The Rockstar, The President and The Hand of Fate
  20. 20The Speech That Broke Me
  21. 21The World Prosperity Forum
  22. 22The Experts Have Been Brainwashed

From the foreword

“Anika’s story of how she recovered her senses should help many others do the same.”
Professor William HapperEmeritus Professor of Physics, Princeton University. From the foreword.
Anika Sweetland, smiling, in a pink blazer with gold necklaces

The author

Anika Sweetland

Climate scientist and former energy advisor

Born in Southampton and raised in Perth, Anika studied Climate Studies at the University of Western Australia. Her choice of degree was anything but accidental. She had grown up genuinely frightened by predictions of catastrophic global warming, and she wanted to help save the world.

After graduating she worked in regional energy policy at the Gascoyne Development Commission, helped produce the Gascoyne Energy Strategy and presented policy recommendations to the Australian government. Over the years, the certainty she had once felt began to unravel.

She has since spoken at the World Prosperity Forum in Zürich and the International Conference on Climate Change in Washington, D.C., and hosts her own weekly segment, Crazy Climate News of the Week, on Mike Graham’s UK LIVE show. She lives in a Hampshire village that looks like something out of a fairytale.

Born
Southampton, England
Raised
Perth, Western Australia
Studied
Climate Studies, University of Western Australia
Worked
Energy policy, Gascoyne Development Commission
On air
Crazy Climate News of the Week, UK LIVE
Lives
A village in Hampshire
Guilty indulgence
Tarot, astrology and the occasional metaphysical rabbit hole
Remain curious, question everything, don’t become too certain of anything, and always try to have some fun along the way.
Follow @anika_climate
Cover of A LOAD OF BOLLOCKS? The Trillion Dollar Climate Scare by Anika Sweetland

Get the book

Pre-order now.

A LOAD OF BOLLOCKS? The Trillion Dollar Climate Scare, in paperback and ebook from Free Speech Press, out 1 November 2026.

Paperback ISBN 978-1-918396-49-2 · Ebook ISBN 978-1-918396-50-8

Booksellers and libraries: order through your usual wholesaler with the ISBN.

Press & events

For press, podcasts and events

Interviews, review copies and speaking requests go through Free Speech Press.

hello@anikasweetland.com

  • Book cover
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  • Trailer
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  • Short bio

    Anika Sweetland is a British-Australian climate and energy commentator, broadcaster, writer and former government energy policy adviser. Born in England and raised in Perth, she studied Climate Studies at the University of Western Australia, then worked in regional energy policy at the Gascoyne Development Commission. She has spoken at the World Prosperity Forum in Zürich and the International Conference on Climate Change in Washington, D.C., and hosts the weekly segment Crazy Climate News of the Week on UK LIVE. Her memoir, A LOAD OF BOLLOCKS? The Trillion Dollar Climate Scare, tells the story of how a young woman trained to fear climate catastrophe began checking the predictions for herself.