"We are entering a new era, one of rapid and often unpredictable climate change"
I think a lot of people can agree with Brown in this quote. We only have ourselves to blame for the negative effects we've had on the planet. But the future is unpredictable. Even if we work together and decrease the amount of carbon being burned for energy climate change can be inevitable. It would still take the earth many years to accommodate for the changes we create. So short term we might not see a lot of results but that does not mean that there might not be any long term results.
"Thus, once coal-fired power plants are closed or wood cooking stoves in villages are replaced with solar cookers, atmospheric soot disappears rapidly"
I don't think that closing coal-power plants are the main things that deposit CO2 into the atmosphere. They are a big part of the problem but when I think of things we could do i think a lot about transportation and at how much fuel we burn with transportation. We burn a lot of fuel using cars but what about bigger scale like planes for example. There are thousands of planes flying around burning more fuel than cars. When commercial planes are parked in airports they don't turn off the engines. They keep the engines running while people onboard the planes, when they clean them, refuel and finally when people board the plane. Thankfully some countries have found different ways of powering and moving trains but when trains moved by burning coal they were big coal burners. So I think the first step would be to find new ways to create energy other than burning coal in plants but finding new ways of transportation will have a big effect as well.
"If all the ice in the Arctic Ocean melts, it will not affect sea level because the ice is already in the water."
I don't understand what Brown means here because we hear the biggest effect of global warming is melting ice which is making sea level rise. Why does he say that "it will not affect sea level"? As water melts it requires more space to take up which is why melting ice is so dangerous as it could create sea water to go inland. He states that the ice is in the water so it would not affect sea level but ice doesn't require as much space because since ice is frozen water the hydrogen particles are farther apart causing ice to float.
