But don’t you see, Leaf, this is one of their red herring fallacious arguments.
Even if it had warmed as fast coming out of the Little Ice Age, so what??? That in no way at all would disprove that our industrial GHG emissions of today are causing AGW.
So what if the MWP was warmer than today (which has not been established globally, but if it were to be then SO WHAT???), or the end-Permian great extinction event, or the PETM, or the Eocene Optimum, or… None of this disproves AGW of today.
So what if it is getting colder in Podunk or part of the Antarctic is gaining sea ice. From the get-go the claim has been made about GLOBAL warming, not local or regional warming.
So what if there is a true pause of 18 years (and they find it did not go into the ocean); climate scientists have always known there are many factors impacting the climate (which is why they need many decades of data); they know perfectly well there will not be straight-line, strictly increasing warming. A humungous volcanic eruption unknown to human history could happen next year and deflect the warming for years, perhaps decades, but it would also be contributing to GW long term, as the atmosphere cleared and the CO2 remained, and CO2 can remain in the atmosphere for centuries, even millennia.
NONE of the skeptic arguments hold any water at all. They are ALL bogus and fallacious. And, I’m sorry to say, it seems they are purposely meant to deceive innocent people.