BTW, good looking kids in your avatar...yours?
Thank you, yes, though the pictures are from about 3 years ago.
By what criteria does one determine that "whole earth" doesn't mean this entire globe that we live upon?
Where is the support in the text that differentiates this from other instances of "whole earth" within the Bible?
You don't have to differentiate it. Jer 15:10 has a man saying he is "a man of contention to the whole earth." Clearly he did not mean China, or even Ethiopia. Later, in Jer 50:23, Babylon is described as a hammer of the whole earth, yet we can be assured that most Celts had never heard of them. In Ez 32:4, God says he'll fill the beasts of the whole earth with the fallen of Egypt. Again, it's doubtful that he meant to include the tigers of India or the tasmanian wolf in that.
A great example of this sort of speech is in Psalm 14, where there is none that does good "no, not one," but it goes on to say that God is with the generation of the righteous.
There is much all inclusive speech, even Biblically, that is not all inclusive.
He knew it the same way that Paul knew that homosexuals would not see the kingdom of heaven but crab lovers would. Inspiration by the Holy Spirit of course.
There are those that take inspiration to extremes and thus deny some pretty obvious science. There are others who believe the morals of Scripture are really from God. Just because one believes that the moral teachings of Scripture are inspired by God does not in any way suggest that they're obligated to believe that "the whole earth" always means the entire globe.