[throwitaway1235]

What year does NOAA choose as the beginning for "record"? It's relevant to the discussion.

Earth is 4.5 billion years old.

Humans have existed for 200,000 years.

This all comes off as political or quasi-religious because I can assure you that the author knows average people will read that headline and assume "begining of time". Hence I call bullshit.

[lucky_cloud]

You read the headline yourself and went off asking a dumb question that's answered in the article.

'On record' implies 'since we started keeping records' and that length of time is specifically stated in the article.

The headline isn't "July was Earth’s hottest month ever" - that's the clickbait headline that would justify your reaction.

[knownjorbist]

What matters is the climate equilibrium that we and the ecosystems we depend on evolved under. Most of Earth's history would be totally uninhabitable for humans ourselves, nevermind those ecosystems. Using the argument of the total time that Earth has existed or previous climate fluctuations totally misses the point.

It doesn't matter what happened millennia ago, what matters is how rapidly things are changing now.

[polotics]

I call bullshit on your half baked retort. How is the short precarious lives of the very few early humans relevant to greenhouse earth 2021?

[cochne]

Probably since humans started recording? Doesn’t seem that misleading to me.

[timeon]

Technically true but not really relevant.