Reddit reviews Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet

He is author of a book called "6 Degrees" which I think has been basically well received. Amazon UK link + reviews:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Six-Degrees-Future-Hotter-Planet/dp/0007209053/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261572715&sr=8-1

I'm not doubting the importance of this matter, and the fact that it's being highlighted by media and discussed again is obviously what's most important... But I'm fairly certain that this is not a new discovery? Last month I read Six Degrees [http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0007209053/] by Mark Lynas [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Lynas] (a non-fiction book that pulls together a great number of research and analysis reports into a straightforward account - for the laymen of us - roughly what is commonly predicted for each degree of global warming within the range of 1-6 predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and he definitely mentions that during the Eocene era tropical fauna (like palm trees) and warm-blooded mammals were able to survive far further into the polar regions than today. but heck, that book was published in 2008. Why is this in the news again now?

Excerpt from an article for the guardian written by Lynas in 2007:
> "To find out what the planet would look like with five degrees of warming, one must largely abandon the models and venture far back into geological time, to the beginning of a period known as the Eocene. Fossils of sub-tropical species such as crocodiles and turtles have all been found in the Canadian high Arctic dating from the early Eocene, 55 million years ago, when the Earth experienced a sudden and dramatic global warming. These fossils even show that breadfruit trees were growing on the coast of Greenland, while the Arctic Ocean saw water temperatures of 20C within 200km of the North Pole itself. There was no ice at either pole; forests were probably growing in central Antarctica."
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/apr/23/scienceandnature.climatechange]