"columbiaaccidentinvestigation"
wrote
Temperature graphed with respect to time from data of vostok ice core,
please not top left corner of graph were previous spikes dropped down,
and the most recent historical spike is staying elevated.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/temp/vo.../tempplot5.gif

Note the slight temperature decline over the last interglacial, and how in
the last several decades, global average temperatures have risen above the
highest fluctuaion in the last interglacial.