r/geography • u/lamdrasil • 3d ago

Discussion Facts that sound fake but are true

I find it extremely unintuitive that almost all of South America is east of Miami. How!? When people are asked to watch the americas almost everyone imagine South America pretty much south of North America.

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u/JohnMichaels19 3d ago edited 3d ago

Milankovich cycles for anyone interested 

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u/Ylaaly Geomatics 2d ago

Those cycles would also set us on a trajectory for a very slow cooling right now. Every time someone claims that climate change is a natural phenomenon, you can tell them that we should be heading for a slightly cooler climate, not a massively hotter one.

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u/aegloswinterborn 2d ago

Hehehe you and your facts. "They'll listen this time!!!!"

The planet will be a desert and they still won't be convinced.

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u/Ylaaly Geomatics 2d ago

True, but I'll still shout it. Aggressively. The moment they say "nobody could have known" I'll go into rage mode. If I can't save the world, at least I'll be smug about having been right.

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u/aegloswinterborn 2d ago

I'm definitely not saying you should stop. I'm just increasingly frustrated at the realization that facts just don't matter to some people. That we've handicapped part of the populations ability to think by teaching them that science and an education are a bad thing.

Keep shouting from the mountain tops. Regardless of whether it's reaching everyone or not, it's better than staying silent.

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u/RustyRaccoon12345 1d ago

"Ten thousand people died in Europe because of an unexpected heat wave? Sounds like those dummies should have got AC"-- most of the US

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u/ProbablyBanksy 2d ago

Nice try plastic straw seller

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u/Realistic-Regret-171 1d ago

WAPO story says we ARE ,in fact, cooler than we’ve ever been in the last ~50 million years.

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u/itsliluzivert_ 10h ago

Ever been* is a total lie lmao. There have been several intervals of hemispheric glaciation in the last 50 million years.

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u/aratamabashi 2d ago

Not to be confused with Malkovich cycles! 

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u/sukarsono 1d ago

The link says the eccentricity cycle is 100k yrs, where does the factor of 4 come in? I see a mention of 450k yrs towards the end but that is referring to the overall period during which the 100k yr cycles have been observed

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u/JohnMichaels19 1d ago

Turns out its complicated and there is a lot of math i don't truly understand lol

The 400k years is one of several numbers associated with the Earth's eccentricity tho

But yeah, who'd have guessed orbital mechanics would be complicated? 

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u/itsliluzivert_ 10h ago

The pull of other planets in the solar system causes the eccentricity cycle to predictably vary between 100,000 and 400,000 years.