There has been a gradual warming since the Industrial Age.
The apparently "sudden" change is supposedly due to a "tip
over" effect.

That sounds like a high priest of MMGW's invention to make
the facts fit the model ... :-)

You have that backwards -- make the model fit the facts.

The models we have are almost certainly not complete, nor fully understood.
So there's certainly a degree of "hand waving", and even giving in to making
tautological explanations.

The problem of renewable energy is one that government and industry should
have been working on since after WWII. They've made only fitful and
half-hearted efforts, most because the energy industry won't be interested
in renewable energy until the non-renewable sources become so horribly
expense it can gouge.