[SeanDav]

At no point have I mentioned scale of change or rate of change. That is irrelevant to the point I am making: that during a warming phase, average temperatures will be the highest they have ever been at the end of the time period under consideration. So a result confirming that is hardly news.

4000 years ago there were still mammoths and far greater glaciation than now, so clearly climate has been warming over the last few thousand years.

[SamPhillips]

Sure. But if someone is saying "the house is on fire" and you reply, "Ah, Yes, clearly we should expect it to be getting warmer, after all it's springtime now", it's not much of addition to the conversation.