I think they actually damage the cause they're working towards, it gives opponents of taking action against climate change cheep ammunition for ad hominem attacks against anyone working on climate change similar to how small groups of rioters can be used to paint entire protests as violent.
As if they were so principled before, or went out of their way to take other objections so seriously.
A more objective measure would be to estimate the cost it would take to get the equivalent level of publicity, rather than trying to estimate the positive or negative impact which is necessarily subjective.
We don't know whether pissing people off is really ineffective or actually galvanizes more people to action. I'd contrast actions like this with the worldwide protests against the Iraq war in February 2003. Those are estimated to be the largest single political demonstration in history, involving 6-10 million people in ~600 venues around the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_prot...
They were huge protests, close to universal. Subsequents events pretty much validated the protesters' concerns. And what did all that peaceful, dignified, disciplined protest achieve? Fuck all. Protests that don't upset anyone are quite useless.