The graph suggests an inverted perspective, that instead of beginning a period of warming, we've been in a long period of cool temps (about 1,000 years), and that we're about to emerge from it. It's warming either way, but the difference is what it's relative to.
To look past the trees to see the forest, what that interpretation points to is the fact that we've built our entire civilization, with its coastal cities and its patterns of agriculture and development, for Cool Earth; and we're about to transition to Warm Earth, and we're likely to find that infrastructure built for Cool Earth will fail on Warm Earth.
Climate change will be no less traumatic for switching perspectives. It may give AGW denialists a warm-and-fuzzy feeling to have an argument with which to try to deflect "blame", but who cares? Warming is warming, and it'll hurt no matter "who" caused it.
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Perspective
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- Climate: Historical perspective