The fourth “Dialogue on Climate” sponsored by the Padua Association of Engineers, featured Prof. Gianluca Alimonti, staff physicist at the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare in Milan and Renato Angelo Ricci, honorary chairman of the Italian Physics Society and former chair of the European Physics Society.
Alimonti documented and elaborated on the gap between records of extreme weather events and media reports on the latter, showing that extreme events such as floods, tornados and hurricanes have not increased even accepting a 1°C increase of global temperature since the Industrial Revolution. NASA observations and even some IPCC reports admit this.
Among other aspects, Alimonti showed that increased damage from extreme events are not related to intensity or frequency of such events, but to the increased value of lost assets, such as houses, infrastructure, etc. built over the decades.
As to CO2 emissions, models show that by cutting emissions back to pre-industrial levels, we would lose 16% of agricultural production.
Professor Ricci blasted the IPCC assumption of measuring climate with mathematical models. As a nuclear physicist, he has been used to working with modelling his entire life, Ricci (now 93!) said. Even the best models and experimental data are not able to represent the entirety of an atomic reality, Ricci said. “Climatic variations are of such a complex nature as to preclude a mathematical representation as the basis for a scientific theory,” Ricci said.
Schiller Institute representative Claudio Celani intervened in the Q&A period, setting the tone for a lively and constructive debate. Celani joined Prestininzi’s regret that attendance in the Dialogue webinars has dropped, and briefed the audience on the highly successful SI international conference June 26-27, at which Prof. Nicola Scafetta, a member of the group, was a panelist. The science panel in the afternoon of June 26, for instance, had over 1300 visits on YouTube, because the panel was part of a larger event that addressed strategic, scientific, economic and cultural issues. Celani invited all participants to join the next Schiller Institute event on the economic and social effects of green transition July 24.
