The IPCC recently released a new report which the newspaper identified as saying the Earth is now warmer than at any time in the last 400 years. That should be no surprise since the Earth was in the "little ice age" 400 years ago. The actual news in the report was that there was reason to doubt the Mann "hockestick," the work on which the previous IPCC report said showed that it is now warmer than at any time in the last 2000 years. Mann was trying to disprove the so-called Medival Warm Period from about 800 to 1200 AD. Mann used tree ring data for the past periods, but switched to actual temperature measurements for the last 100 years or so. (The modern tree ring data do not reflect the temperature increase indicated by the measurement data, a minor inconvenience.) Most, but not all, studies of past temperatures using a variety of techniques show that there was a Medieval Warm Period when temperatures were 1.5 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than now. (The fact that measured temperatures since 1998 is also inconvenient.) This link summarizes studies of temperatures in different parts of the globe.

http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/data/mwp/mwpp.jsp