"The Arctic as a region is an excellent harbinger of future change, Briner said, because the signals or clues that signify climate change are so much stronger in the Arctic than elsewhere on the planet.

"Yet, even when we take that phenomenon into account," he noted, "the signals we're finding on Baffin Island are huge," he said. "The temperature records, that is, the 'signal' of warmth that we're reconstructing for this part of the Canadian Arctic over the past 10,000 years seems to be higher than the global average for that period and even higher than the Arctic average."

For example, during the 'Holocene thermal maximum,' the warmest period of the past 10,000 years, the Arctic average temperature was two to three degrees warmer than it is today, while the global average was only a degree or so warmer.

"But based on lake sediments from Baffin Island, our data show that this area of the Arctic experienced temperatures five degrees warmer than today," said Briner. "
....
"Like other paleoclimatologists, he also is finding that the warming trend that began in the 20th century is more pronounced in the Arctic than it is in the rest of the globe.

"The magnitude of warmth over the past 100 years seems pretty exceptional in the context of the past 1,000 years," he said."
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-01/uab-dia011807.php

[linked from http://www.junkscience.com/]

So. Thousand years ago it was about 1 C warmer globally than today. Where they are measuring it was 5 degrees warmer than today; and in the arctic it is thought have been two to three degrees warmer than compared to today's temperature. I wonder how the polar bears surivived- they didn't even have park rangers back then. You think the Indians saved them? Maybe it was the Bigfoot, that came to the rescue.
Now in the context of the last 1000 years, the last 100 year has had significant rise in temperature which is exceptional. This is not really surprising considering that in say the last 2000 year period, we have had an exceptional period of cooling called the Little Ice Age. And apparently it could be said that we have yet to fully "recover" from the Little Ice age. And mystery is why did temperature drop relatively quickly for a relatively short period time [a few centuries, rather than framing it in terms recent warmth]. You will also note that it's in the last 100 hundred year, not in last 30 or 40 years. Most of warming occurred before any significant increase in human emission of CO2.

So lets go over this again if global temperature were to increase in the next Century by as much as they did in the last Century, the global temperature would still be below the temperature 'Holocene thermal maximum' and arctic temperatures would also still be lower than at that time. Now if we had such a 2 century warm period that would of course be even more exceptional than our last 100 years. Who knows it might be that such a warming period that it is not something that has occurred in the last 100,000 year, or maybe even in the entire history of our planet.

BUT the global warming alarmist are predicting an even much more significant increase: 5 or 10 times higher temperature increase in a mere century. Now if the global temperatures were to increase by the wildest estimation by such people as AL Gore or People who frothing even more than this [which is hard to imagine] Earth still won't be the hottest is as ever been in the last 500 million years- but no doubt it would be an extraordinary increase in global temperature in a very brief period of time. It would almost be as wild as alien landing [if you are a climate geek].