Climatewatch: the miner's canary

Polar researchers refer to the Arctic as the world's miner's canary that foretells what can/will later happen in other areas of the globe. Recent discoveries point out that the pace of the changes monitored might be much faster than expected, taking place under our very eyes:
Vanishing Arctic ponds
There does not seem to be any doubt that we are at a tipping point. The questions that remain are whether we have passed it and have started to plunge or not and if not, what can be done to change course (if anything can be done) and can we do it in time to avoid the worst.
One of the arguments invoked by those who oppose the various theories of climate change is that the Earth's climate has changed before, even more drastically, without the catastrophic effects forecast in our case. Or that these changes are cyclical and have happened repeatedly, some of them every few thousands years or so, and obviously they do not pose such a risk and are relatively quick to come out of. However, the details usually left out are that some of the changes noticed nowadays (like the increase in the CO2 levels in the atmosphere) are something that has not been seen on Earth in a few HUNDRED THOUSAND years. And that, moreover, the accelerated increase that sends such factors up the scale in a few years would otherwise take THOUSANDS of years to occur as part of Earth's cyclical changes.
In other words, it is not that the pattern is new, it's the speed of change that points to a disruption.
Lastly, as a note of curiosity about some of the alternative theories out there regarding the causes of climate change: Climate change - Sun & the stars vs C02