Hot killers, alarmism and fake news: official data deny the increase in dead death in Milan and Rome. The meteorologist Paolo Sottocorona clarifies the false myths on the perceived temperature and invites to a critical reading of the weather forecast. Between emergencies rain and soil consumption, what really changes with the climate that evolves?
I have always been fascinated by the origin of the news. In the sense that I am passionate about finding out how certain titles are born and how easy it is to feed alarmism starting from false news. Take for example the heat-killer (the newspapers have the macabre taste of renting criminal responsibilities both to the increase in temperature and the lowering, natural phenomena which, however, from time to time are transformed into serial killers). It was enough that an elderly man with previous pathologies died on the beach and in the editorial offices the hunt for deaths due to the heat was taken. In the world for the most disparate causes, 150 thousand people pass by better life, but it is sufficient that in summer there is one that collapses under the sun because on the front page and in the evening news you start talking about the victims of the AFA. In the end a few days, here is the news that, in the hottest week of the year, 500 people died between Milan and Rome, a number of trapassi that would have tripled compared to the average. Too bad that, as colleagues of truth have reconstructed, in the period considered there has been no variation compared to the past. Every day 40 people die in the Lombard capital and so it was also in the ten days that according to the newspapers were “hot”.
And speaking of temperatures that “dissolve the asphalt”, last week the outburst of the meteorologist Paolo Sottocorona had a lot of fun, who daily deals with the weather forecast on La7. After reading the newspapers on the hot emergency, the expert took it with certain titles fired by head. “Someone gives the numbers. We have a day with high values, but there are no 40 degrees ». And again: «What is written in the newspapers is often not true: 40 degrees in Italy are not there. The great heat on Europe concerns a part of the EU, the northern one has maximums between 18 and 20 degrees. So it’s in the cold ». Sottocorona is not a denialist, as all those who nourish doubts about climatic overheating are now called. It is simply a gentleman who has been dealing with weather forecast for half a century and even without being a scientist knows atmospheric phenomena quite well. And regarding the alarms that are often launched, it has a very precise opinion. On the so -called perceived temperature, with which we tend to say that it is warmer than the mercury column indicates, he explains that “it is an absolute nonsense. It does not exist, it is only the observation that the human body suffers from the same temperature suffers if the air is more humid. But it is not that he feels a higher temperature. There is a greater discomfort, but it is an individual fact. Each organism suffers differently. You at 35 degrees and with high humidity you are sick, I don’t ».
Clear? But if someone writes that the perceived temperature is 42 degrees, everyone says that in Italy the peak of the summer heat has been touched and every time there is the run -up to say that it is worse than the previous year, even if it is not always true.
The ways in which the too hot is denounced are the same as which the theme of the rain is then addressed. I was struck by a news released on the internal pages of the Corriere della Sera after the downpour of last week. To explain why there had been floods in various areas of Milan, the newspaper in via Solferino explained that the land is “waterproof” and therefore the rain slips away. Given that, if this were true, the mayor of the Lombard capital should make a reflection: instead of paving the squares, as he is doing, he would do well to let the grass grow, so it would really be a green administrator and not just an environmentalist in words. But apart from this, reading the article I discovered that a century ago in the Lombard capital it rained for 95 days a year, while today only 79. On average, one day one day every six years explains the city meteorological observatory. All this would originate from the famous global overheating, but then in the report it turns out that the amount of water that falls on the city is the same for a hundred years now. It rains less days a year, but it rains the same. And this is the big difference of an evolving nature. Of course, if the rainfall is concentrated, you risk flooding, but if you avoid tiring the squares and you allow the ground to drain the water, perhaps some discomfort can be avoided.
Always on condition that, with this story of the warm killer, someone has not overheated the brain.
