What science requires (a post for the "warming since little ice age" folks)

Tom McClintock, take note. From Eduardo via Stoat:

"[Scientists want to know (and do know - ed.)] what are the factors or combination of factors that have caused this [recent, global] warming. Note that even if temperatures had been much higher in, say 1800, even much higher than today -which I doubt - this question would remain. We see a change and we have to find an explanation for that change... By this I mean among other things that, for instance, 'recovery from the Little ice' is not a known physical process that is described by any known equation. Also, natural oscillations are not a known physical phenomenon per se. If there is a 'natural oscillation' there is something that oscillates and for some reason. What is that and what makes it (quasi) oscillate ? Neither is an answer of the type 'it was warmer in the Medieval Warm period, so I don't care' permissible. I think that we all should require physically consistent explanation from any theory of climate change, and not only from the anthropogenic greenhouse effect."