**MYTH:** We are currently in an Ice Age and climate records are irrelevant because they don't go back to the beginning of the planet. **TRUTH:** We are not currently in an Ice Age. Earth is in an interglacial period—a warm phase between ice ages—that began approximately 11,700 years ago. The last Ice Age ended when massive ice sheets retreating from Europe and North America melted. Current global temperatures are significantly higher than Ice Age conditions, when ice sheets covered much of northern Europe and North America. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirms we are experiencing rapid warming that has accelerated dramatically since industrialisation. Climate records extending back hundreds of thousands of years provide crucial scientific evidence through ice cores, tree rings, coral reefs, and sediment layers. These paleoclimate records don't need to cover Earth's entire 4.5-billion-year history to be scientifically valid—they provide detailed data about past climate patterns that help scientists understand current changes. The National Academy of Sciences confirms these records show current warming is unprecedented in speed and scale compared to natural climate variations over the past 800,000 years. **Sources:** IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (2021); NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies; National Academy of Sciences, "Climate Change: Evidence and Causes" (2020)