The climate scientist Michael E. Mann, physicist and climatologist who was the first to publish a precise reconstruction of the planet's average temperature in past centuries, will be a guest at the MUSE Science Museum in Trento on Monday 18 June at 21.00, where, starting from his book "The Earth is Burning", he will talk to other guests about the denial of climate change in the Trump era.
The conference will be attended by Sara Ferrari, Councilor for University and research, Michele Lanzinger, director of MUSE and Claudio Della Volpe, chemist-physicist of the University of Trento. MUSE glaciologist Christian Casarotto and Roberto Barbiero, climatologist of the Trentino Climate Observatory will also dialogue with Mann. The meeting will be moderated by Gabriele Carletti, Rai journalist.
“In my work – commented Michael E. Mann – I bring scientific evidence of climate change, I explain the reasons why we have to deal with it and the harmful and absurd effects of the self-interested work of some partisan public figures, who tend to confuse the public, attacking science and scientists and denying the very existence of the problem. Despite the scale of change we are experiencing, particularly severe in the Trump era, I am cautiously optimistic. In fact, I believe that, despite everything, we will prevail in the greatest battle that human civilization has ever fought, namely the one to avoid the impacts of irreversible climate change".
The meeting will be an opportunity to talk again about the impressive data published by Mann on temperatures of the last 1000 years, which have caused a stir and given rise to fierce criticism in the United States. In fact, due to his research work, Michael E. Mann has faced numerous personal attacks from advocates of climate change denial, particularly numerous and growing since the Trump administration took office in the United States. However, the data was collected thanks to an original statistical method and using different indicators, such as tree-ring thickness, subsurface thermal gradients and isotopic composition and then plotted into a graph, published in Geographical Research Letters in 1999, which amazed the scientists themselves.
Up until 1850, in fact, the temperature curve was practically flat and then showed a very rapid increase in the XNUMXth century in correspondence with the period in which coal, gas and oil began to be used. The curve in the graph resembled a hockey stick. For Mann, the "hockey stick” (hockey stick) constitutes the essential data base for analyzing and modeling the causes of the “global warming” phenomenon. From the subsequent analysis and modeling work it was established that the causes - with a 95% probability - are anthropogenic. Thus, the hockey stick has become the symbol of human responsibility towards global warming.
Michael E Mann (born December 28, 1965 in Amherst) is an American climatologist and geophysicist, professor of meteorology and currently director of the Earth Systems Science Center at Pennsylvania State University. Through the use of theoretical models and observed historical data, his research has contributed to the scientific understanding of climate change and its causes.
He was one of the eight lead authors of the chapter “Observed Climate Variability and Change” of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Scientific Assessment Report published in 2001. The IPCC recognized that his work, along with that of many other lead authors and reviewers, contributed to the award of the Nobel Prize for Peace 2007, which was jointly won by the IPCC and Al Gore.
