"There are a lot of other data points to indicate that the general temperature has gone up over the past century or two."

There is little doubt in my mind that we are in warming period rather than still being in the cooling period of the Little Ice Age.

"The arguments are on causes, not about the existence of the effect. "

Well we know that CO2 from human emission was not the cause of most of the warming in last Century or so. And that the amount of CO2 from any source is not a major driver of Warming or Cooling and since the beginning of 21 Century global temperature has remained nearly flat, perhaps even slightly declining. Whereas if one is looking for a cause of any warming caused by human activity, Urban Heat island affect is something in which there is no doubt that it's caused from human activity, and if we wanted this changed, there are probably things that could be done which would have significant affect of local temperature.