1) You are right that it was a minor reference, and I wish the article had been more robust; however, what is stated is that, "overall [the shipping records show] a clear signal of human-caused warming since the industrial revolution." Which, as you agree in your second point, would mean also a sign of declining ice cover.
2) Yes, this is true (I will have more on the topic soon). There is no disagreement here, and this seems only to reaffirm my point. It would be cherry picking to say this supported your argument that max ice cover "peaked in the 1970s," because we know there was a c.1930-1954 warm period in the temperature record. Rather, if we're comfortable making that claim, we should be comfortable to say that it peaked in the pre-industrial, early industrial period; i.e. the long term trend -- even outside of the satellite record -- is one of decline.
3) This seems like more cherry picking given what you've already admitted. But, the article also talks about certain lakes having less clear trends, due to shallow waters, etc. If we take, for example, Lake Superior (see below), the last 38 years do indeed show a clear trend, even if the R value is low due to lots of inter-annual variability.
You've done almost the exact same thing as those who were claiming there was a "hiatus" in warming, and you seem to concede (as the evidence clearly shows), that the long term trend has been of decline.
As I stated previously, I do think it is remarkable -- and I wish more discussed in an approachable way -- that we've had some extremely cold winters around the Great Lakes in recent years. However, the minima in max extent continue to be "post-1998" level (and, there are many more years reaching below 30% cover than in the period prior), showing that the system has indeed changed. The inter-annual variability has gone up, and the system seems to be oscillating. If you have good reason to believe that when it settles, lake ice will continue to grow, I would really love to hear your case. I tend to believe -- along with most scientists -- that within the next 30 years, we will see lake ice on the Great Lakes mostly disappear.
Now imagine we had not had this exchange and your original post (that I took issue with) was the last and only word. Can you see all that would have been left out, and how that might be misleading to the casual reader... how it might actually even feed a narrative of climate change denial?