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Comment by Fellshard | Hacker News Reader

*first time ever _during the period in which temperatures have been recorded in France._

It seems pithy to focus on that, but implicitly hiding scope of things that have only been actively measured for centuries at most in order to use hyperbolic language such as 'ever' is /only/ used to drive fervor for a cause, and needs to be more reasonably grounded in order to draw a broader consensus.

(Also, no quicker way to get yourself downvoted than stating anything that could be construed as being climate change skepticism. This criticism regards use of precise language, not climate change.)

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A reasonable person would understand that this is within the context of modern history.

It's common knowledge (grade school level?) that the earth was once much, much hotter (and at other times colder) than it is today.

A shame people push down this comment because they don't like it. It is rational and true. It is also rational and likely true that these temps have happened in the recent past - say within the last 5000 years.

Of course it was much hotter a really long time ago, as others have pointed out. But that fails to contradict the validity of this comment.

You can believe in climate change and be skeptical of the wording around it.

> It is also rational and likely true that these temps have happened in the recent past - say within the last 5000 years

There is zero evidence for the hypothesis that Paris was this hot at any time in the last 10,000 years. There is a lot of evidence for maximum annual temperatures in Paris over every other stage of the Holocene being lower.

It is thus not a rational view to hold in light of the preponderance of evidence. (It is fair to search for counter-evidence, but not to reject the claim.)

Where is this evidence? We don't have exact recordings that far back.

Further thought: All it requires for the title to be falsified is a single oddly hot day to have occured say 4725 years ago. There's never going to be evidence with sufficient resolution to catch that.

It seems quite plausible that we're cranking up temps recently. But why do so many fervently defend a rather disingenuous title?

> We don't have exact recordings that far back

We don't have exact recordings of anything. Certain minerals form differently depending on ambient temperatures. For area temperature estimation, these methods are more precise than most thermometers.

I don't think it was wrong to downvote the comment and the comment was unfairly pedantic and inaccurate.

Anyone with even a tiny amount of scientific literacy knows what the phrase "since records began" means, and that phrase is entirely honest and not used at all to hide the size of the data set.

OP's issues with a completely routine and accurate description, since they cannot be considered a fair criticism of normal language by an unbiased viewer, thus must be due to their scientific illiteracy or inexperience with the subject, or due to their politics causing them to "find any reason to object" leading them to settle on unfair and bad pedantry.

It's literally the first sentence of the article:

> Temperatures in France crossed the 45 Celsius threshold for the first time _since records began_ on Friday.

It’s obviously implied. The temperature is very noteworthy and the headline writer’s lack of space for more specificity is a distraction.

> have only been actively measured for centuries at most

We have reliable ways of estimating past temperatures. Gas from ice cores, temperature-influenced mineral formation, et cetera. Many of these methods are more accurate than thermometers from only a century ago.

Yeah nothing to see here, just another historical extreme heat-wave hitting an entire continent. How dare they suggest this isn't ordinary. /s

Suggesting something is not ordinary is not the same as using hyperbolic language. Conflating the two is very unwise.

> Suggesting something is not ordinary is not the same as using hyperbolic language

If something isn't ordinary it is, by definition, extraordinary. Using hyperbole to highlight the extraordinary in a way that no reasonable person would misunderstand has rhetorical heritage going back to Socrates.

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