But if you claim that this is the hottest month since then, when the average temperature varies by less than a degree a year, you’re implying that you know the maximum yearly average temperature from 120000 years ago to within a degree. The article you linked doesn’t mention how precise the estimations are, but I can’t imagine they’re that precise
Without rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the Earth is currently on course to reach temperatures of roughly 3 C (5.4 F) above preindustrial levels by the end of the century, and possibly quite a bit higher.
At that point, we would need to look back millions of years to find a climate state with temperatures as hot. That would take us back to the previous geologic epoch, the Pliocene, when the Earth’s climate was a distant relative of the one that sustained the rise of agriculture and civilization.
That 120000 figure is false. There’s no way we could know the Earth’s average temperature 120000 years ago
Historic temperatures are based on the fossil, geologic, and hydrologic record, mostly
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/national-museum-of-natural-history/2018/03/23/heres-how-scientists-reconstruct-earths-past-climates/
But if you claim that this is the hottest month since then, when the average temperature varies by less than a degree a year, you’re implying that you know the maximum yearly average temperature from 120000 years ago to within a degree. The article you linked doesn’t mention how precise the estimations are, but I can’t imagine they’re that precise
Is it really hotter now than any time in 100,000 years?: