Are elites "distracting us with talk of heatwaves and global warming, in order to exterminate us?" No, that's not true: The summer of 2023 has seen record-high temperatures, with the world reeling from wildfires, floods, and heatwave-related deaths. Studies show that record-breaking temperatures are ten times more likely because of climate change, not due to an undercover plan of the "elites."
The claim originated from a video published by TikTok user @ion.dragos.horeaba (archived here), on July 13, 2023, with the caption (translated from Romanian to English by Lead Stories staff):
It's not about the heatwave, it's about finding an excuse for our extermination.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Jul 19 09:04:24 2023 UTC)
Scientists in recent years have been developing models and have conducted experiments to understand how much humanity's hunger for fossil fuels is impacting the climate.
Climate change caused by greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels is poised to make heatwaves longer, more intense, and more frequent, according to a Vox article. A study by World Weather Attribution (WWA) found that an extreme heatwave in Western North America, in 2021, for example, would have been virtually impossible without human-caused climate change. Researchers looking at past events in other parts of the world also have found that humans share a huge portion of the blame. After a summer heatwave in 2019 was blamed for 2,500 deaths in Western Europe, a study found that climate change made Europe's heatwaves five times more likely due to global warming.
Heatwaves in oceans have become 20 times as likely as average temperatures have risen. Additionally, researchers reported that the 2020 heatwave in Siberia was 600 times more likely as a result of human-induced climate change.
There is no credible basis for the claim that elites want to exterminate the human race and that talk of global warming and climate change, which are grounded in science and data, is a distraction from a supposed behind-the-scenes evil plan.
