This is not particularly startling news as the pre-industrial long-term cooling trend has been known about for some years -

startling news pre-industrial long-term cooling years
http://www2.ucar.edu/news/846...

startling news pre-industrial long-term cooling years httpwww2 ucar edunews846
Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia - http://holocene.meteo.psu.edu...

reconstructions hemispheric global surface temperature variations millennia httpholocene meteo psu

You may recall that the extremely rapid anthropogenic warming we're seeing now is happening at a time when orbital cycles would predict continuing cooling rather than rapid warming - hence this is pretty convincing evidence that the warming is entirely unnatural and that human activity is now by far the dominant influence on global climate.