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Correction: Earth just experienced its hottest-ever October ON RECORD.

More click-bait lies from the media.

First sentence of the article:

> Last month was the hottest ever October on record globally, ...

Headline: Earth just experienced its hottest-ever October

Report:

>0.69°C warmer than the average October from 1981-2010, making it by a narrow margin the warmest October in this data record;

>an insignificant 0.01°C warmer than October 2015, the second warmest October;

>0.09°C warmer than October 2017, the third warmest October.

I don't want to be a "climate change denier" or whatever, but what if 1980 was hotter? It sound like things are largely in line with the last 5 years. The report is (probably) good data collection, but this kind of reporting by CBS doesn't seem useful -- other than to mislead.

I do not think that it is dialogically interesting to critique the reporting when the subject matter is clearly what is in scope here. As with any new reporting if you have interest in a broader context or more details after consuming a story you should, you know, check it out. I'm fuzzy on what your expectation would be... a comprehensive telling of an enormously large scale of data in a mainstream press story? The story is that it was the hottest-ever October. The reason for the telling is that October 2019 just came to a close.

But, to do as you ought to have done rather than type and copy and paste this story in the comments, I googled: global temperature data for last 100 years. The first response is from NOAA which has reasonably accurate temp data since 1880. https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/global/time-series/globe/land_...

October 2019 data is not yet added, but it does already indicate that September 2019 was the hottest on record, and that the top of a sorted list of hottest months ever recorded features very few months not in the 21st century. It's interesting. Poke around.

Also, friend, .69 degrees C more in the global temperature average is not, not at all, a narrow margin. Variations exist in these global averages for sure, and they are often naturally occurring and they can be bigger than that but .69 is not small. Check it out.

Standard conservative responses:

--The globe is not getting warmer

--We don't know if the globe is getting warmer or not

--We do know the globe is getting warmer, but we don't know why

--We do know the globe is getting warmer, but it has a different cause than human activities

--We do know the globe is getting warmer, and it is in part due to human activities, but any action to counter this would be more harmful than letting it get warmer.

--We do know the globe is getting warmer and action needs to be taken, but it should all be voluntary actions by private enterprises, and no new governmental regulations.

And let us not forget: increased atmospheric co2 is beneficial because it increases agricultural production.

Have I missed any?