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Comment by Cypher | Hacker News Reader

It's not earth's hottest month. Earth was much hotter before the last ice age.

Technically when the Earth still had a molten crust it was the hottest. Does that matter right now? No, this is about our climate changing radically and us needing to do something before we make our planet less habitable. Nitpicking at phrasing will not help with this.

The UK was a serious wine and grape producer in the Middle Ages. It was warmer. We’re not even at that stage yet.

There's no evidence for this. England was slightly warmer in the Medieval period than in the Renaissance or Iron Age, but nowhere near as warm as today. There were more vineyards in the 11th century than the 19th century, but at this point there are vineyards all over England, and there are even a few in Scotland.

In short, although vineyards are an extremely bad proxy for the temperature record, even by the vineyard standard it is much warmer today in the UK than it ever was over recorded history.

* since direct record keeping began

Or, according to indirect proxy measurements, since the first agricultural revolution when humans started relying on stable climates with the invention of farming, and relying on stable sea levels by building large fixed settlements on the coasts, about 12,000 years ago.

Note that the article does mention this: "July 2023 was the hottest month in recorded history", "the average global temperature was 1.54 °C above the preindustrial average for July", etc... (emphasis mine). It's just that nuance tends to be missed in headlines.

Not that that's a good thing, but it's not like it's unique to climate reporting. If you want to have a go at editors for clickbait/hyperbolic headlines, you can probably find better examples in the politics or media coverage sections of whatever publications you prefer.

Apparently you didn’t even read the first paragraph: “hottest month in recorded history”.

Well yeah nobody is saying that nature is fucked.

It's just that we're living right now and not before the last ice age. Sucks for us.

Sucked more in 1816, which according to CNN was the coldest summer in two centuries.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/17/world/tambora-eruption-year-w...

"The global temperature dropped between one and three degrees Celsius. It was the coldest year in at least the last 250 years ... led to crop failure, the death of livestock and famine."

Uh………yeah that will happen when the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history happens and blasts 10 cubic miles of material into the atmosphere, which you conveniently forgot to mention. Your example has 0 relevance to climate change.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1815_eruption_of_Mount_Tambo...

Cold causes crop failure, famine, and disease. Cold harms humanity.

I mean yeah, there were times in Earth's past where sea levels were so high that the American midwest was an ocean. Americans living in the midwest would like to avoid this scenario. Even more threatened are lowland states like Florida and Louisiana.

Sure in a technical sense the Earth will survive this change. It's a big ball of rock, a few degress of difference on the surface means nothing to it. For the plants and animals however we're talking about a mass extinction event.

Heavy sigh.

What's the point of this? Just to be "technically" right?

Global civilization wasn’t around before the last ice age, I’m not sure what your point is.

Clearly the planet will be fine if temperatures keep rising, Earth has seen far greater catastrophes and temperature swings.

It remains to be seen whether humans will be fine if the climate keeps warming.

I guess that's fine if we're willing to go back to a hunter gatherer lifestyle. Are you?

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