User mocks 2016 climate prediction 2026

An X account posted a short video on June 3 mocking an old climate-extinction prediction that said humans would be gone by 2026. The post came from the account redpillb0t and was identified in the source briefing as status 2062142322784239683. The social briefing said the post had about 60 likes on Wednesday. The clip used the earlier prediction as a punch line in a social-media thread rather than as a new scientific claim. ### Which prediction was the post mocking? The phrase “no humans on Earth by 2026” is tied online to Guy McPherson, a former University of Arizona professor whose near-term human-extinction claims circulated for years in fringe climate discussions. A 2022 BizNews interview with McPherson described him as predicting humans would be extinct by 2026, and a recent Answers in Genesis post revisited that same claim as the 2026 date arrived. Wikipedia and Wikiquote entries summarizing McPherson’s public statements also point to a 2018 formulation that “there will be no humans on Earth by 2026,” though those are secondary compilations rather than primary sourcing. Those references are consistent with the broader online record that the mocked claim did not come from mainstream climate assessments such as those issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (biznews.com) ### Did mainstream climate science ever say humanity would be gone by 2026? The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center is still issuing routine seasonal outlooks and ENSO discussions in June 2026, a sign of how climate science is actually communicated: through probabilistic forecasts, measured risks and observed trends, not claims of human extinction within months. Its latest discussion said El Niño was likely to emerge soon and continue through the 2026-27 Northern Hemisphere winter. (en.wikipedia.org) Forbes and Yale Climate Connections both described climate change in 2026 as a mounting risk to safety, economies and natural systems, but neither framed it as an imminent end-of-humanity event. Those accounts instead discussed accelerating warming, stronger storms, rising seas and policy challenges. ### What do we know about the X post itself? (cpc.ncep.noaa.gov) The social briefing supplied for this story identified the post as coming from redpillb0t and said it had about 60 likes on June 3. The same briefing described it as a video post mocking the 2016-era climate prediction. Because X content can be difficult to verify directly through public web tools, the post ID and engagement figure here come from the supplied briefing and card context rather than a fully rendered public page. (forbes.com) The post fits a broader pattern on social platforms in which old apocalyptic predictions are resurfaced when their deadlines pass. In this case, the satire focused on the gap between an extreme claim that circulated online and the fact that 2026 has arrived without the predicted human extinction. ### Why did this resurface now? June 2026 is the obvious trigger because it is the year named in the prediction. Recent commentary from Answers in Genesis, Climate Change Dispatch and Climate Depot also revived the McPherson claim as that date approached or arrived, showing the prediction was already recirculating across ideologically mixed websites before the X post appeared. (x.com) The next place to track the discussion is the X thread under status 2062142322784239683, where replies and reposts will show whether the clip remains a small social-media joke or spreads into a wider climate-argument cycle. (answersingenesis.org)