In the post, Thunberg cited a "leading climate scientist" who claimed that unless we cease burning fossil fuels within the next five years, "climate change will wipe out all of mankind."
Unknown as to when the self-described "autistic climate justice warrior" removed the tweet, Twitter personality Jack Posobiec first became aware of it on Saturday. Her tweet contained a link to a defunct website.
Posobiec received no response from Thunberg herself, but a slew of right-wing commenters joined in to let her know that the world did continue to exist.
According to US right activist Brigitte Gabriel, Greta Thunberg deleted this tweet because it revealed her to be a phony. "Make certain that everyone sees it."
Thunberg might not have foreseen the extinction of humanity in 2023, though. She might have been saying that if fossil fuels weren't phased out by this year, the human race will go extinct at some unspecified point in the future, as some commenters noted.
The Swedish activist has previously made predictions along these lines. She asserted that unless carbon emissions can be cut by more than 50% by 2030, "irreversible chain reactions beyond human control" will occur in a 2019 speech to the United Nations. A year later, she made the following statement while addressing the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos: "Humanity has eight years to entirely divest from fossil fuels."
Environmental activists have a history of making ominous forecasts. Experts warned that global cooling would make much of North America uninhabitable in the early 20th century, and in the 1970s, biologist Paul Ehrlich predicted that rising temperatures would result in mass hunger in the UK by the year 2000.
In his 2006 documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," former US Vice President Al Gore predicted that by 2013, hundreds of millions of people would have to flee their homes due to the melting of the polar ice caps. His staff referred to the date as a "ballpark" one when it seemed unlikely that his forecast would come true.
