
Milankovitch Cycles - LinuxBender
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
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dividido
This is something taught about in most introductory earth science classes in
college and is pretty interesting. Recently, I've seen it referenced as a
means to debunk global warming as the historical evidence of the fluctuation
of temperature throughout history and natural global warming. However, it
doesn't account for anthropogenic changes in CO2 output, albedo changes as ice
masses melt, and of course cow farts.

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tasty_freeze
Seconded -- I know little about climate science, but I have faith that the
people who have PhDs in in and have dedicated their working lives to learning
more are aware of Milankovitch cycles. Yet over and over some other internet
dummy who is no more educated on the subject than me will dismiss the IPCC
report and triumphantly say something like, "AGW is a hoax. The climate
changes cyclically because of Milankovitch cycles", as if climate scientists
had never heard of it or hadn't factored that into their models already.

Another good one is when they will trot out some statistic, say, 30M years ago
the CO2 levels were at 4000ppm and we are doing just fine. What they seem to
fail to recognize is that the only reason they have that knowledge is due to
climate researchers. Somehow the deniers will accept climate research if they
think it supports their position, but then will decry the researches as
ignorant, as if the climatologists weren't aware of the very facts they have
amassed.

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danioli
It's not that I'm sceptical of climate science, it's just that the discussion
is now... entrenched. The random person will not debate the wisdom of human-
induced changes to the weather, but also will probably not understand the
Milankovitch cycles, or know the ocean water levels rise and fall on
geological timescales by about 130 meters?, that we know this because (IIRC)
of Wallace (I think, in tandem with Darwin?) who also noted that the
divergence between different variants of the same species across the islands
of an an archipelago varied more with the depth of the water between islands,
than with just the distance. What about the PET (Paleocene-Eocene transition)?
I'm sure that climate scientists are doing their jobs, but that doesn't mean
that there aren't many (including "activists") who are willing to debate the
matter without this key. Why doesn't this ever come up? (both the cycles, and
the lack of depth in the discussions) If it's as dire as some seem to imply,
we should all switch to nuclear right now. And personally, I am even more
sceptical when I hear talk of climate justice, but that is an entirely
different issue.

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Kadin
> If it's as dire as some seem to imply, we should all switch to nuclear right
> now.

We probably should, or take other similar-scale approaches (multiple, as it
wouldn't do to put all our eggs in one basket).

The lack of response shouldn't be taken as any indication that the problem
isn't dire. That would be placing a truly ridiculous amount of faith in human
civilization to tackle collective-action problems, which there is little
evidence we are especially good at doing.

In fact, what you see in the world is _exactly consistent_ with an extremely
dire problem and a very insufficient response.

Why the response to such a dire problem is so lukewarm is left as an exercise
for the reader.

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ZeroGravitas
I think it's notable that he's saying "I don't believe in this, but I'd belive
it if you did X" where X has been considered and dismissed by most relevant
experts (nuclear is simply too slow to build and and too expensive to fix the
problem) exactly like these cycles have been discounted as an explanation of
global warming.

So if someone keeps bringing these things up, then it's likely they're acting
in bad faith or they've been duped by someone else doing likewise.

Enthusiastic nuclear support while downplaying other sensible solutions
(carbon fees, renewables, insulation and efficiency) is basically the socially
acceptable face of climate change denial at this point.

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roberto
I have a friend who did his PhD studying Milankovitch cycles in the
Netherlands.

When he defended his thesis, his friends presented him with the
"milankofiets": a bicycle ("fiets", in Dutch) where the wheels were off-
center, and the crown was elliptical (and also off-center). Biking it was very
hard, and the speed would vary depending on the phase of each part of the
bicycle.

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AstralStorm
Come on, historians like epicycles. Which would be a proper name for that
riding implement in English. (Presuming it's the stationary one.)

Anyway, we have math to prove any semistationary sequence can be broken down
into a bunch of cyclical patterns "plus error". That says nothing about
predictive value of that model.

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doctoboggan
PBS Eons recently did a good video covering this topic. Check it out here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUdtcx-6OBE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUdtcx-6OBE)

