"Life on earth may have survived the ice ages, but it's unlikely our agriculture and industry could adjust in time to a warming of similar magnitude occurring in a relatively short time."

Let's say that next year global temperature were to rise by .5 C, and next year would rise the same and so on for next decade. This would HUGE HUGE increase in global temperature and within a extremely short time period.
In what way could either agriculture or industry not adjust to this extreme increase in temperature?

Such increase in global temperature would be enormous but compared to daily swings temperature it is insignificant. And within the decade of time of having such huge increases in global warming there is no reason why any individual would personally observe any significant change in the world around him. Sea level wouldn't rise. And in any given region it's normal for there to be wider changes in temperature on a yearly basis due natural climate variablity. And finally, it would be no more than a farmer in Oregon, moving to southern calif and claiming that due to climate he was unable to grow crops.

Now, I'm assuming this temperature increase is caused by increase in the greenhouse affect- which means warmer night temperatures and warmer winters. Rather than say a increase in summer temperature highs.

Another thing to consider is increasing temperature due to Urban Heat island. It would be quite possible for an area which had extreme urban growth to have local average temperature to increase substantially within a short period of time- perhaps even more than continous .5 C increase in average temperature every year for 10 year or even for couple decades. So what I'm saying is that agriculture [and of course industry] near a urban centers growing rapidly have already on numerous occasions in various times and places have gone through such periods of increased average temperatures.

Now, I doubt that global temperatures will rise by as much as 1 C over the next Century. And if temperature were to rise by as much as 1 [almost twice the increase of the previous century] I fail to see any significant consequences. Now, one is going to have regional changes in climate- regardless if global temperature increase, decrease or remain the same. Regions could have more rain, or have less rain and there could be big consequences to this. Nor does these regional climate changes have much to do with increases or decreases in global CO2.
Nor would significant increases in Arctic regional temperature [say increase of say 5 C in average regional temperature] have much affect on large bodies of ice of Greenland in the short term [in a few decades]. And it's quite possible that warmer or cooling temperature in the Arctic could result in more of build up of ice.