2005 May Be Most Hyperbolic Year Ever

The Associated Press has a story today titled "2005 May Be Warmest Year Ever". Read down to the third paragraph, however, and you see:

In New York, NASA's Goddard Institute projected that 2005 will surpass 1998 to end as the hottest year globally in the 125 years since reliable records have been kept.

Since when does 125 years qualify as "ever"? I'm as worried as the next guy about global warming, but note to headline writers: you don't help the cause by over-exaggerating.

There is one interesting statistic in the article:

The atmosphere now holds more than one-third more carbon dioxide than it did before the Industrial Revolution. In fact, European scientists reported last month that analysis of ice cores from Antarctica shows that today's level is 27 percent higher than any previous peak looking back 650,000 years.

650,000 years? Now we're talking. Of course, even that's not much compared to the billions of years Earth is supposed to have been around.