The planet, as such, would have absolutely no problem with a temperature increase even several times as large as the worst case scenario we're looking at now. Mankind and most current species of animals and plants would be largely or entirely exterminated of course, but so what, in the millions of years to come new species would develop to take our place, like what happened in earlier mass extinction events like the one that ended the dinosaur era.

So if you were a shark, let's say, who've been around as a species with remarkably little change since the dinosaur era, or if you were God, your criticism about the hyperbole would be very valid. But since you're a human, maybe not so much.

Because for mankind, yes, global warming is a pretty freaking big problem - while the earth has indeed been far warmer in the past, with far higher CO2 levels than today's, those periods were long before humanity existed. From the start of recorded human history prior to the start of those records, of course researchers can't say for sure that there hasn't been a single day that was hotter, there's always statistical outliers, but they can definitely say that there haven't been entire years that were as hot as most of the ones in the past decade, so this is still relevant news.