[DennisP]

We're currently at one degree above preindustrial, and the world looks a lot like he described for that level.

The book was published in 2009 but most of the news since has not been encouraging. A recent book that covers similar ground, also with a lot of references, is Unprecedented by David Ray Griffin; the conclusions are similar. If you want more detail on the geologic evidence, see Storms of My Grandchildren by James Hansen.

You're surely right that there will be things that improve. However, we know from geology and paleontology what's happened in previous major warming periods: mass extinction, and a huge loss of biomass, with most of the survivors clustered around the poles. That doesn't bode well for us.

[antognini]

> However, we know from geology and paleontology what's happened in previous major warming periods: mass extinction, and a huge loss of biomass, with most of the survivors clustered around the poles.

I thought that warming events were generally associated with speciation events, at least on land. (Marine life is a different story.) The last event, the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, coincided with a major speciation event for mammals.