Extreme temperature changes across the Arctic regions are a common occurrence over history - not only does anecdotal evidence corroborate these climate changes but the empirical evidence is indisputable: Arctic temperature swings are big and frequent, and they happen regardless of CO2 emissions
(click on charts to enlarge; source of chart on left)
The chart on the left was produced by Dr. Ole Humlum, who is a scientist/researcher/teacher with a deep interest in the polar regions. He is a prolific author and is responsible for many peer reviewed articles (here is a recent study of his).
This chart comes from Dr. Humlum's invaluable, publicly available climate resource, www.climate4you.com.
The primary dataset plotted on the top-left chart is the Greenland GISP 2 ice core evidence - reconstructed ice sheet temperatures at Greenland's Summit. The bottom-left chart represents a plot of ancient atmospheric CO2 levels that dovetail with periods shown in the top chart of temperatures.
The top chart reveals the wide, extreme swings in Arctic region temperatures, which took place without any significant change in CO2 levels. On the chart, 'C3' has noted the 'peaks' of many of the temperature extremes with red dots. In addition, the points at which the shift occurred to higher temperatures are denoted with purple arrows. There are seven of these extreme upward spikes in temperatures marked in this manner.
For the modern warming, Dr. Humlum's best estimate of what an ice core proxy plot may indicate for a current temperature is marked with a red dashed line. He estimates that a ice core proxy temp for today may be equal to the ice core proxy temp for the Medieval Period. (This is just an estimate, of which there are many. Take your pick.)
The chart on the right is a bar graph representation of the data plotted on the leftmost chart. Specifically, each bar represents the Arctic/Greenland temperature increase from the beginning point (purple arrow) of an extreme temperature increase to its corresponding peak (red dot). In addition, for each bar is listed how many years before the present (ie, 1950) that the 'peak' occurred; how many years until the 'peak' was reached from the 'low' beginning point; and, the associated atmospheric CO2 level for the given 'peak'.
Conclusions:
It's a lot of visual information to consume in these three charts, but in general....
1. Past extreme temperature increases happened without a significant change in CO2 - extreme temperature changes are caused by natural forces
2. The majority of extreme temperature increases were greater than the recent modern temperature change
3. Ergo, the vast majority of the modern temperature change could be a result of natural forces, not due to the hypothetical impact of human CO2 emissions
4. The majority of extreme temperature increases were of longer duration than the modern global warming of 228 years (from 1785AD to 2013AD)
5. Ergo, while the modern warming has "paused" over the past decade, it may begin anew adding years to its length, all because of the same natural forces that happened before
6. Since the modern global warming experience has not been as extreme a 'climate change' as the natural past climate changes (in terms of duration or amount of increase) it is highly probable that modern global warming is mostly an 'under-performing' natural phenomenon with a tiny enhancement from human CO2 emissions.
This actual empirical evidence clearly points to natural phenomena as being the culprits of the world's continuous climate change and warming/cooling. The fact that the billion dollar climate models, to a great degree, ignore or minimize a wide variety of these powerful natural climate forces likely explains their well documented, spectacular failures of prediction - the same goes for the consensus "experts."