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.

No, I said it exactly as intended. I guess the subtlety of that was -
well -
just too subtle for you ... It is the *model* that is pushed by the MMGW
high priests as immutable ("we're right, therefore you must be wrong",
remember?), so when the facts do not fit that model, an excuse for the
factual anomaly is invented, and given a fancy name ...

The "facts" are that there was been a noticeable rise in the Earth's
temperature over the past 20+ years. You can't change this, so you have to
change the model.