Recently, the infamous environment activist Greta Thunberg deleted an old 2018 tweet where she had said humanity would go extinct by 2023 because of climate change. She has not provided any explanation for deleting the tweet. It was available at least till March 7, 2023, as captured by Archive.org. The last capture of the tweet was at 9:52 PM GMT.
In the now-deleted tweet, Greta Thunberg wrote, “A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years,” while quoting a now-deleted article by Gritpost.com. The website no longer exists.
The article on Gritpost was titled “Top Climate Scientist: Humans Will Go Extinct if We Don’t Fix Climate Change by 2023.” The article quoted Professor James Anderson, a professor of atmospheric chemistry at Harvard University, who had warned that climate change was pushing back Earth to the Eocene Epoch from 33 million BCE when there was no ice on either pole. The article was based on a Forbes report titled “We have five years to save ourselves from climate change, Harvard Scientist says”. Notably, Anderson is best known for establishing that chlorofluorocarbons were damaging the Ozone Layer.
As per Forbes, back then Anderson had said, “We have exquisite information about what that state is because we have a paleo record going back millions of years when the Earth had no ice at either pole. There was almost no temperature difference between the equator and the pole.”
He had added, “The ocean was running almost 10 degrees centigrade warmer all the way to the bottom than it is today, and the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere would have meant that storm systems would be violent in the extreme, because water vapour, which is an exponential function of water temperature, is the gasoline that fuels the frequency and intensity of storm systems.”
“The chance that there will be any permanent ice left in the Arctic after 2022 is essentially zero. Can we lose 75-80 per cent of permanent ice and recover? The answer is no,” he said.
Interestingly, Anderson never suggested that humanity would go extinct, as suggested by Greta and Gritpost. Anderson emphasised working extensively for five years to reduce the use of fossil fuels.
Greta Thunberg’s dubious history of running propaganda
The child activist who gained fame for propagating against Climate Change is best known for running wild with theories and pushing people, especially youngsters who admire her, to believe that they can bring change “by protesting” rather than working on the actual problem to find a solution. She has a history of running propaganda and joining hands with dubious organisations. For example, Greta tried to meddle in India’s affairs by supporting protests against now-repealed agriculture laws. She accidentally published a link to a toolkit that was developed to paint a bad picture of the Indian government on an international platform. Several arrests were made in the matter, and it is sub-judice.
Recently, Greta was caught filming a staged arrest during a protest. More details of the incident can be read here. OpIndia’s reports on Greta Thunberg can be seen here.