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18 March 2016, The Guardian, Welcome to the climate emergency: you’re about 20 years late February 2016 saw global warming records tumble with new data suggesting more Australians think humans are the cause. Everywhere you look right now, the Earth’s climate system seems to be breaking records. To choose the most inappropriate metaphor possible, February 2016 would have been enough to bring a lot of climate watchers out in a cold sweat. Figures from Nasa using thermometers and ocean temperature readings showed February was the hottest month on record, by quite a margin. According to satellite data, the amount of Arctic sea ice also hit an all-time low for this time of year since measurements began in 1979. Scientists also use satellite data to calculate air temperatures. Climate science contrarians and denialists like these readings because they have not shown as much warming as the more reliable readings on the surface. But February also set a new record for global temperatures from satellites. As Joe Romm at Climate Progress noted, “climate science deniers need a new meme”. These heat records have been variously described as “terrifying”, “jawdropping” and “shocking”. One climate scientist in particular, Professor Stefan Rahmstorf, appeared to capture the mood with a quote repeated in stories around the world, including here on the Guardian. “We are in a kind of climate emergency now,” said Rahmstorf, of Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. But here’s the rub. Global warming is proceeding pretty much exactly as predicted. Professor Stefan Rahmstorf. To climate scientists like Rahmstorf, the temperature records being broken right now are not a surprise and, at least according to Rahmstorf, they shouldn’t be seen as an entry point to some terrifying new era (at least not as terrifying as things already are). “The media’s view is too short-term,” he told me. “As scientists we want to keep an overview of all the data and the knowledge of how the whole system works.” Read More here