pages: CommissiononPersonswithDisabilities/2018-05-09.pdf, 4
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CommissiononPersonswithDisabilities | 2018-05-09 | 4 | COMMISSION ON DISABILITY MEETING MUTES OF Wednesday May 9, 2018 6:30 p.m. levels. Cities can reduce greenhouse emissions but also need to get ready for what's on the way. And that's actually very possible here at the city level. The need to focus on disability and then Patrick has shared with me and we've talked a bit about Alameda's plans and needs going forward. Then how we can integrate disability and then a little bit about the potential for a partnership between our organization and your city. Alex Ghenis: Really the TLDR [Too Long Didn't Read] of what is climate change is basically the sun gives thermal radiation. There are different gases in the atmosphere, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, helium, don't hold any heat. They don't vibrate when the sun's rays hit them. The only things that keeps us from being the temperature of space are greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and those have gone up, CO2 has gone up about 46% since we started burning coal way back in the 1880s, and that is starting to make things a lot warmer. As things get warmer, that changes the way that the earth operates. It changes many, many aspects of the climate system. Alex Ghenis: Beth and I were very briefly talking about the city's focus on disaster readiness, but there really is a lot more than that. Alameda for example is very concerned about sea level rise, especially over the long-term, being that most of the city is pretty close to sea level. And that will affect nature ecosystems and humanity, and affect all of these in kind of intersecting and diverse ways. Alex Ghenis: Just a quick graph right here. The next slide is, you can see this is how carbon and in solid form and in gases moves throughout the system. And we have started, I had another slide, and I don't know why I forgot to put it in here, but it has circles around a good half dozen of these 20 different things that we've really started to throw out of whack. So burning fossil fuels, we're starting to pull that coal gas the way that we've changed our farming. There are more forest fires because things are getting hotter. And one of my main concerns is the fact that we've kickstarted a system that is going to perpetuate itself, even if we go entirely renewable. And that's why it's so important to adapt. Alex Ghenis: Some of the impacts of climate change, I'm sure you all have seen these before, the direct impacts being stronger, more frequent storms. What hit us last year in 2017, the winter of 2016-2017 was really unprecedented, especially in the way that those storms came down. Expanding drought and forest fires. There's a lot of drought in the southwest right now. It's certainly affecting California and the forest fires, I think, as we all know, were a big, big issue this past year, and will continue to be going forward. And if there's forest fires in Napa, it doesn't necessarily affect homes in Alameda, but it certainly affects people with asthma and particulate matter and things like that will affect the population over here. Alex Ghenis: Sea level rise and ocean acidification. As oceans get warmer, they expand and get taller. And as our ice caps melt, all that ice floods into the ocean and the oceans get taller still. And we're looking at a lot of that, potentially a whole lot, which is really important as I said to the city. More intense heat waves, especially in urban areas. The Bay Area certainly deals with a lot of that. And Alameda has certain parks and open spaces, but for the large part is an urban environment and there will be very intense heat waves here. And then just general weather pattern changes, which will affect us. We've built society around a certain weather pattern and it's going to change moving forward. It will have indirect impacts on infrastructure, food insecurity, poor health and mortality. It 05/30/18 Page 4 of 32 | CommissiononPersonswithDisabilities/2018-05-09.pdf |