Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
In a recent interchange over at Joanne Nova’s always interesting blog, I’d said that the slow changes in the sun have little effect on temperature. Someone asked me, well, what about the cold temperatures during the Maunder and Dalton sunspot minima? And I thought … hey, what about them? I realized that like everyone else, up until now I’ve just accepted the idea of cold temperatures being a result of the solar minima as an article of faith … but I’d never actually looked at the data. And in any case, I thought, what temperature data would we have for the Maunder sunspot minimum, which lasted from 1645 to 1715? So … I went back to the original sources, which as always is a very interesting ride, and I learned a lot.
It turns out that this strong association of sunspot minima and temperature is a fairly recent development. Modern interest in the Maunder sunspot minimum was sparked by John Eddy’s 1976 publication of a paper in Science entitled “The Maunder Minimum”. In that paper, Eddy briefly discusses the question of the relationship between the Maunder sunspot minimum and the global temperature, viz:
The coincidence of Maunder’s “prolonged solar minimum” with the coldest excursion of the “Little Ice Age” has been noted by many who have looked at the possible relations between the sun and terrestrial climate (73). A lasting tree-ring anomaly which spans the same period has been cited as evidence of a concurrent drought in the American Southwest (68, 74). There is also a nearly 1 : 1 agreement in sense and time between major excursions in world temperature (as best they are known) and the earlier excursions of the envelope of solar behavior in the record of 14C, particularly when a 14C lag time is allowed for: the Sporer Minimum of the 16th century is coincident with the other severe temperature dip of the Little Ice Age, and the Grand Maximum coincides with the “medieval Climatic Optimum” of the 11th through 13th centuries (75, 76). These coincidences suggest a possible relationship between the overall envelope of the curve of solar activity and terrestrial climate in which the 11-year solar cycle may be effectively filtered out or simply unrelated to the problem. The mechanism of this solar effect on climate may be the simple one of ponderous long-term changes of small amount in the total radiative output of the sun, or solar constant. These long-term drifts in solar radiation may modulate the envelope of the solar cycle through the solar dynamo to produce the observed long-term trends in solar activity. The continuity, or phase, of the 11-year cycle would be independent of this slow, radiative change, but the amplitude could be controlled by it. According to this interpretation, the cyclic coming and going of sunspots would have little effect on the output of solar radiation, or presumably on weather, but the long-term envelope of sunspot activity carries the indelible signature of slow changes in solar radiation which surely affect our climate (77). [see paper for references]
Now, I have to confess, that all struck me as very weak, with more “suggest” and “maybe” and “could” than I prefer in my science. So I thought I’d look to see where he was getting the temperature data to support his claims. It turns out that he was basing his opinion of the temperature during the Maunder minimum on a climate index from H. H. Lamb, viz:
The Little Ice Age lasted roughly from 1430 to 1850 … if we take H. H. Lamb’s index of Paris London Winter Severity as a global indicator.
After some searching, I found the noted climatologist H. H. Lamb’s England winter severity index in his 1965 paper The Early Medieval Warm Epoch And Its Sequel. He doesn’t give the values for his index, but I digitized his graph. Here are Lamb’s results, showing the winter severity in England. Lower values mean more severe winters.
So let me pose you a small puzzle. Knowing that Eddy is basing his claims about a cold Maunder minimum on Lamb’s winter severity index … where in Lamb’s winter severity index would you say that we would find the Maunder and Dalton minima? …
Figure 1. H.H. Lamb’s index of winter severity in England.
As you can see, there is a reasonable variety in the severity of the winters in England. However, it is not immediately apparent just where in there we might find the Maunder and Dalton minima, although there are several clear possibilities. So to move the discussion along, let me reveal where they are:
Figure 2. As in Figure 1, but with the dates of the Maunder and Dalton minima added.
As we might expect, the Maunder minimum is the coldest part of the record. The Dalton minimum is also cold, but not as cold as the Maunder minimum, again as we’d expect. Both of them have warmer periods both before and after the minima, illustrating the effect of the sun on the … on the … hang on … hmmm, that doesn’t look right … let me check my figures …
…
…
…
… uh-oh
…
…
Well, imagine that. I forgot to divide by the square root of minus one, so I got the dates kinda mixed up, and I put both the Maunder and the Dalton 220 years early … here are the actual dates of the solar minima shown in Lamb’s winter severity index.
Figure 3. H.H. Lamb’s England winter severity index, 1100-1950, overlaid with the actual dates of the four solar minima ascribed to that period. Values are decadal averages 1100-1110,1110-1120, etc., and are centered on the decade.
As you can see …
• The cooling during the Wolf minimum is indistinguishable from the two immediately previous episodes of cooling, none of which get much below the overall average.
• The temperature during the Sporer minimum is warmer than the temperature before and after the minimum.
• The coldest and second coldest decades in the record were not associated with solar minima.
• The fastest cooling in the record, from the 1425 decade to the 1435 decade, also was not associated with a solar minimum.
• Contrary to what we’d expect, the Maunder minimum warmed from start to finish.
• The Dalton minimum is unremarkable in any manner other than being warmer than the decade before the start and the decade after the end of the minimum. Oh, and like the Maunder, it also warmed steadily over the period of the minimum.
Urk … that’s what Eddy based his claims on. Not impressed.
Let me digress with a bit of history. I began this solar expedition over a decade ago thinking, along with many others, that as they say, “It’s the sun, stupid!”. I, and many other people, took it as an unquestioned and unexamined “fact” that the small variations of the sun, both the 11-year cycles and the solar minima, had a discernible effect on the temperature. As a result, I spent endless hours investigating things like the barycentric movement of the sun. I went so far as to write a spreadsheet to calculate the barycentric movement for any period of history, and compared those results to the temperatures.
But the more I looked, the less I found. So I started looking at the various papers claiming that the 11-year cycle was visible in various climate datasets … still nothing. To date, I’ve written up and posted the results of my search for the 11-year cycle in global sea levels, the Central England Temperature record, sea surface temperatures, tropospheric temperatures, global surface temperatures, rainfall amounts, the Armagh Observatory temperatures, the Armagh Observatory daily temperature ranges, river flows, individual tidal stations, solar wind, the 10Beryllium ice core data, and some others I’ve forgotten … nothing.
Not one of them shows any significant 11-year cycle.
And now, for the first time I’m looking at temperature effects of the solar minima … and I’m in the same boat. The more I look, the less I find.
However, we do have some actual observational evidence for the time period of the most recent of the minima, the Dalton minimum, because the Berkeley Earth temperature record goes back to 1750. And while the record is fragmentary and based on a small number of stations, it’s the best we have, and it is likely quite good for comparison of nearby decades. In any case, here are those results:
Figure 4. The Berkeley Earth land temperature anomaly data, along with the Dalton minimum.
Once again, the data absolutely doesn’t support the idea of the sun ruling the temperature. IF the sun indeed caused the variations during the Dalton minimum, it first made the temperature rise, then fall, then rise again to where it started … sorry, but that doesn’t look anything like what we’d expect. For example, if the low spot around 1815 is caused by low solar input, then why does the temperature start rising then, and rise steadily until the end of the Dalton minimum, while the solar input is not rising at all?
So once again, I can’t find evidence to support the theory. As a result, I will throw the question open to the adherents of the theory … what, in your estimation, is the one best piece of temperature evidence that shows that the solar minima cause cold spells?
Now, a few caveats. First, I want to enlist your knowledge and wisdom in the search, so please just give me your one best shot. I’m not interested in someone dumping the results of a google search for “Maunder” on my desk. I want to know what YOU think is the very best evidence that solar minima cause global cooling.
Next, don’t bother saying “the Little Ice Age is the best evidence”. Yes, the Maunder occurred during the Little Ice Age (LIA). But the Lamb index says that the temperature warmed from the start of the Maunder until the end. Neither the Maunder’s location, which was quite late in the LIA, nor the warming Lamb shows from the start to the end of the Maunder, support the idea that the sun caused the LIA cooling.
Next, please don’t fall into the trap of considering climate model results as data. The problem, as I have shown in a number of posts, is that the global temperature outputs of the modern crop of climate models are nothing but linear transforms of their inputs. And since the models include solar variations among their inputs, those solar variations will indeed appear in the model outputs. If you think that is evidence for solar forcing of temperature … well, this is not the thread for you. So no climate model results, please.
So … what do you think is the one very best piece of evidence that the solar minima actually do affect the temperature, the evidence that you’d stand behind and defend?
My regards to you all,
w.
[UPDATE] In the comments, someone said that the Central England Temperature record shows the cooling effects of the solar minima … I’m not finding it:
As you can see, there is very little support for the “solar minima cause cool temperatures” hypothesis in the CET. Just as in the Lamb winter severity data and the Berkeley Earth data, during both the Dalton and Maunder minima we see the temperature WARMING for the last part of the solar minimum. IF the cause is in fact a solar slump … then why would the earth warm up while the sun is still slumping? And in particular, in the CET the Dalton minimum ends up quite a bit warmer than it started … how on earth does this support the “solar slump” claim, that at the end of the Dalton minimum it’s warmer than at the start?
The Usual Request: I know this almost never happens, but if you disagree with something that I or someone else has said, please have the common courtesy to QUOTE THEIR EXACT WORDS that you disagree with. This prevents much confusion and misunderstanding.
Data: Eddy’s paper, The Maunder Minimum
Lamb’s paper, The Early Medieval Warm Epoch And Its Sequel
Berkeley Earth, land temperature anomalies
Ulric Lyons says:
June 23, 2014 at 7:44 pm
You seem confused about cause and effect. At the end of the Dalton minimum, the temperature was well above what it was at the start … why?
And in both the Dalton and Maunder minima, the temperature started to rise well before the sunspots started to rise … why?
At the onset of the Dalton minimum, the temperature rose for a decade … why?
The fact that we see cold spells that coincide with minima does NOT mean that they are caused by the minima. If they were, I wouldn’t be asking “why” above.
You seem to think that because the Maunder minimum OCCURRED near the end of the Little Ice Age, it CAUSED the Little Ice Age. Nothing could be further from the truth. Any solar minimum that happened to occur during the LIA would have cold temperatures … so what?
As to the famous “Ulric Minimum” of cycles 12-14 … you’ll have to wait until it gets re-named by an official body before it enters into anyone’s calculations.
w.
Pamela Gray says:
June 23, 2014 at 9:24 pm
You are wrong on so many bases that I hardly know where to begin and will necessarily have to leave some points out.
1) No one dates the LIA from as early as 1258. Few if any even start it at 1280*. I’ll believe you that someone does, but please show me who this is. Thanks. (See below.)
2) It is not certain that there was a single VEI 6 or above eruption in AD 1258. Such evidence as exists supports a number of alternative hypotheses:
http://www.wired.com/2012/02/the-mysterious-missing-eruption-of-1258-a-d/
3) My information is at least as up to date as yours. Please show your work by which you determined that the LIA, ie c. AD 1350 to 1850, was a period of increased and sustained on a regular basis volcanism, statistically significantly greater in frequency and magnitude than during the preceding Medieval and following Modern Warm Period.
*Dating the LIA: the most common dates are AD 1350 to 1850, but NASA narrows it to 1550 to 1850. There was climatic deterioration after 1250 and famine in Europe during the first half of the 14th century, but these were associated with normal fluctuations toward the end of a warm period (same happens in reverse toward the end of cool periods, such as the LIA). And of course there are decadal ups and downs within centuries-long cool and warm periods.
sturgishooper says:
June 23, 2014 at 7:52 pm
So far, the only information we have seen regarding the Sporer and Wolf minima is Figure 3, which totally disagrees with your claim. If you have other estimates of the temperature in say 1450-1560 during the Sporer minimum, please provide it.
Please cite for us Herschel’s statements about the Sporer and Wolf minima … or any of the great sunspot minima, for that matter.
Finally, you are arguing that there is a 200-year scientific consensus on whether the Oort minimum caused cooler temperatures. If so, please provide your supporting evidence for such a claim.
w.
How reliable are the start and end dates of the various minima (Dalton and Maunder in particular)?
Shifting the start/end dates around could change your interpretation of the data, so I was wondering how precise those dates actually are? i.e. what’s the +/- on the dates?
Matthew R Marler says:
June 23, 2014 at 8:43 pm
————————————
“I wouldn’t rule that out, but there isn’t the supporting/testing evidence either. Or is there?”
First off there are simple empirical experiments you can run demonstrating the spectral variance / depth of absorption issue with selective surfaces –
http://oi61.tinypic.com/or5rv9.jpg
Illuminate both blocks with equal SW and block A runs far hotter. However illuminate with equal wattage of IR and both run at the same temperature. A clear demonstration as to why spectral variance is critical to calculating ocean temps. Treating the oceans as a “near blackbody” effected only by a 0.1% variance in TSI is demonstrably wrong, and given this engineering knowledge of selective surfaces is decades old, inexcusable.
Second, you can find papers such as this one discussed at CA in 2005 –
“Impacts of Shortwave Penetration Depth on Large-Scale Ocean Circulation and Heat Transport”
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JPO2740.1
While the paper is modelling based and is largely concerned with biological turbidity, the physical mechanisms proposed would have similar effects to solar variance in strength of UV penetrating to depth. It is notable that the authors understood the difference between “near blackbody” and “selective surface” and thereby why the depth of absorption was critical to heat content and circulation patterns.
Thirdly, we know that surface UV variance in the last 3 decades has been two orders of magnitude greater than TSI variance.
Finally, we are building a record of ocean temps below 100m via ARGO. However this will take time.
The bottom line is this – if you don’t understand how the sun heats the oceans, you can’t understand the effect of solar variability on the oceans. “near blackbody” + “TSI” = garbage.
lsvalgaard says:
June 23, 2014 at 9:24 pm
That is an excellent question, worthy of and doing credit to a great specialist of your caliber.
The easy answer is that I can do it when looking at different historical data sets or counts, so why can’t anyone else? But admittedly that doesn’t suffice. I’d even support your general goal of agreeing on a single count system, while quibbling with the specific one your group is trying to impose.
What does suffice, IMO, is the fact that understanding how the Wolf number is or was derived allows a careful scientist to make valid comparisons.
Willis Eschenbach says:
June 23, 2014 at 9:47 pm
The 200 year old observation is the connection between sunspots and climatic data.
I should add that the Oort and Wolf Minima are named for those astronomers. They didn’t necessarily share Herschel’s or anyone else’s suspicion of a climatic connection with SSN.
Vangel says:
June 23, 2014 at 8:31 pm
A “fracking obsession”? Any man who starts a comment by accusing another man of having an “obsession” without providing a single scrap of evidence is not worth talking to. That’s just mudslinging, not interested, thanks.
w.
JPG says:
June 23, 2014 at 9:47 pm
The start and end dates, as I’ve commented here, are to some degree fungible. Basically, they are whenever SSN falls below or rises back to an average level, so are approximate.
I can not find the WUWT post but I won’t let that stop me.
As the magnetic fields that work together to cause the sunspots weaken, their interactive efficiency becomes less. At that time the number of sunspots reduces faster than the output of the sun reduces.
So during a grand minimum the sun may be able to decrease and increase output without changing the number of sunspots.
Is there a sun influenced isotope chart?
Also what were the volcanoes and the PDO doing?
I think the sun and orbit are the least strong but most persistent enforcers of climate change.
And there is rarely just one answer.
Matthew R Marler says:
June 23, 2014 at 8:40 pm
Thanks, Matthew. Regarding 10Be, see my post here. Short version? 10Be is far from what it is claimed to be, and the Greenland and Antarctic ice core 10Be records don’t even agree with each other.
w.
At the risk of being crude (and ignorant), why TF would you divide anything by the square root of minus 1? It’s kind of like E=MC squared. Really? Why TF would you square the speed of light?
@gymnosperm – It is a joke. He did not divide by the square root of -1 (i)
sturgishooper says:
June 23, 2014 at 9:48 pm
What does suffice, IMO, is the fact that understanding how the Wolf number is or was derived allows a careful scientist to make valid comparisons.
That fact is that no-one alive has done this, except the experts now re-evaluating the SSN. And nobody [except the observers in Locarno] I know of, knew that the Wolf number was artificially inflated by 20% in 1947. Did you know this? I discovered this in a few years back, e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/SIDC-Seminar-12Jan.pdf which gave the impetus to the SSN-workshops. What we are doing is simply providing the understanding needed to use the Wolf Number correctly.
sturgishooper says:
June 23, 2014 at 9:23 pm
It’s not true that nobody did.
If so, can you tell me who did? otherwise you cannot make the claim.
So you cannot tell.
Your venomous agenda-driven rearguard resistance to divulging to researchers the flaws that have been uncovered in the historical SSN is understandable [there are many just like you], but is hardly science, regardless of what you say.
Well, stick around. I think we are about to find out(in many of our life times).
Willis Eschenbach says:
June 23, 2014 at 9:56 pm
Regarding agreement between the poles, as usual, you could not possibly be more wrong.
http://www.clim-past.net/9/749/2013/cp-9-749-2013.pdf
Not also the 11 year cycle recovered in these synchronized data. Had you done a rudimentary literature search, you’d have found this and so many other studies showing your pet theories to be fantastic delusions. Why anyone here or anywhere else pays the least heed to your garbage (to use your favorite term for the work of those who dare to disagree with you), I don’t know, but have my suspicions. I prefer drivel to garbage:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X12004748
Abstract
Cosmogenic 10Be in polar ice cores is a primary proxy for past solar activity. However, interpretation of the 10Be record is hindered by limited understanding of the physical processes governing its atmospheric transport and deposition to the ice sheets. This issue is addressed by evaluating two accurately dated, annually resolved ice core 10Be records against modern solar activity observations and instrumental and reanalysis climate data. The cores are sampled from the DSS site on Law Dome, East Antarctica (spanning 1936–2009) and the Das2 site, southeast Greenland (1936–2002), permitting inter-hemispheric comparisons. Concentrations at both DSS and Das2 are significantly correlated to the 11-yr solar cycle modulation of cosmic ray intensity, rxy=0.54rxy=0.54 with 95% CI [0.31; 0.70], and rxy=0.45rxy=0.45 with 95% CI [0.22; 0.62], respectively. For both sites, if fluxes are used instead of concentrations then correlations with solar activity decrease. The strength and spectral coherence of the solar activity signal in 10Be is enhanced when ice core records are combined from both Antarctica and Greenland. The amplitudes of the 11-yr solar cycles in the 10Be data appear inconsistent with the view that the ice sheets receive only 10Be produced at polar latitudes. Significant climate signals detected in the 10Be series include the zonal wave three pattern of atmospheric circulation at DSS, rxy=−0.36rxy=−0.36 with 95% CI [−0.57; −0.10], and the North Atlantic Oscillation at Das2, rxy=−0.42rxy=−0.42 with 95% CI [−0.64; −0.15]. The sensitivity of 10Be concentrations to modes of atmospheric circulation advises caution in the use of 10Be records from single sites in solar forcing reconstructions.
From Girma on June 23, 2014 at 9:12 pm:
756 / 69 = 10.9565
Close enough to the 11 of the sunspot cycle for the running mean of the temperature to have an imposed “11” cycle.
So let’s build a running mean from primes. 3*5*7*7 = 735, no 11. However 3*7 is close to 2*11, so I’ll also take out a 7. I’m also adding endpoints for whole years and starting from the shortest dataset.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1850/to:2014/mean:735/normalise/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/to:2014/mean:735/normalise/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1850/to:2014/mean:105/normalise/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/to:2014/mean:105/normalise
Huh, at 735 months HadCRUT4 started leading SSN about 1885.
But at 105 months, it looks more like an inverse relationship, one goes up while the other goes down.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1850/to:2014/mean:15/normalise/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/to:2014/mean:15/normalise/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1850/to:2014/mean:105/normalise/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/to:2014/mean:105/normalise
And with the other 7 out, pretty much nothing there at all.
lsvalgaard says:
June 23, 2014 at 10:03 pm
I did not know this until I read your work, but that doesn’t mean that people didn’t know previously that there were problems with the Wolf number.
As I said, my agenda is science. I don’t think that your current efforts are an improvement on the data sets that you hope to overturn. IMO they’re worse, but I would welcome a valid revision of Wolf number or any previous attempt to make a consistent actual or reconstructed count of SSN.
lsvalgaard says:
June 23, 2014 at 10:03 pm
To clarify, I’m not fighting a rearguard action against divulging problems. I support drawing attention to the limits of past SSN counting systems. I do however object to the scheme which you wish to substitute and which your team is intent upon imposing, complete with sanctions upon heretics who resist reeducation. I guess I have failed to make that clear.
Are we enabling our own home grown Nuccitelli? Just for example, take the reply above….
Must I really wade through another cranky post? If you don’t understand it, W, that doesn’t mean other people don’t. I noticed many years ago the Greenland and Antarctic cores didn’t agree. What you can’t deny is the Greenland core shows a Youger Dryas signal. That doesn’t happen by accident. What caused it is debatable. Now there’s where some good discussion can get interesting, but no, instead we have to slog though half-analysis and undergraduate charts.
Oh, crap. Now I’m getting cranky. Does that happen to everybody when they get older?
The Samalas volcano in Indonesia was identified as the most likely candidate for the 1257 volcanic event recorded in ice cores at both poles.
From the abstract:
“Drawing upon compelling evidence from stratigraphic and geomorphic data, physical volcanology, radiocarbon dating, tephra geochemistry, and chronicles, we argue the source of this long-sought eruption is the Samalas volcano, adjacent to Mount Rinjanion Lombok Island, Indonesia. At least40 km3 (dense-rock equivalent) of tephra were deposited and the eruption column reached an altitude of up to 43 km. Three principal pumice fallout deposits mantle the region and thick pyroclastic flow deposits are found at the coast, 25 km from source. With an estimated magnitude of 7, this event ranks among the largest Holocene explosive eruptions. Radiocarbon dates on charcoal are consistent with a mid-13th century eruption. In addition, glass geochemistry of the associated pumice deposits matches that of shards found in both Arctic and Antarctic ice cores, providing compelling evidence to link the prominent A.D. 1258/1259 ice core sulfate spike to Samalas. We further constrain the timing of the mystery eruption based on tephra dispersal and historical records, suggesting it occurred between May and October A.D. 1257.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/09/26/1307520110
sturgishooper says:
June 23, 2014 at 10:08 pm
Willis Eschenbach…
Regarding agreement between the poles, as usual, you could not possibly be more wrong.
If you were aware of recent literature you might know that there are serious disagreements between the 10Be measurements between hemispheres and even between ice cores in the same hemisphere, e.g. http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1003/1003.4989.pdf
From sturgishooper on June 23, 2014 at 10:12 pm:
Wrong. The Wolf number is the one they are building to remedy the problems with the others. How would people know previously there were problems with a new yet-unborn creation?
Matthew R Marler says:
June 23, 2014 at 9:20 pm
Since Eddy was only able to find a few articles in obscure journals to reference as prior art regarding the association of solar minima and temperature, what are you calling “strong”?
And “sparked an interest” does NOT mean “the idea is attributed to”. It means that following the publication of the article, it was cited and discussed and the ideas became much more prevalent. It doesn’t mean that the author originated the idea, it just means that he sparked more interest in an existing idea.
Finally, tonyb claimed that it was a mistake that I had “attributed it to eddy or lamb” without having the common decency to quote my words. Where is he claiming that I attributed it to Lamb, for example? I said nothing of the sort about Lamb, I defy you to find anything like that. It’s just tonyb’s fantasy, and I’m tired of being asked to defend myself against some fool’s fantasy about something I neither said nor implied.
Not only that, but you, without checking to see if I’d said a single word about Lamb and the association of solar minima and temperature, are now here to defend tonyb’s fantasy about Lamb … you sure you want to do that? Because I assure you, defending his bs is not a plus for your reputation …
Sorry, Matthew, but I’ve had it up to here with accusations that I’ve made a mistake that are coming from anonymous jerks who can’t be bothered to quote my words after being requested over and over to please do so. And well-meaning, decent folks like you who for some unknown reason blindly jump in to defend someone else’s uncited fantasy accusation that I’ve made a mistake just make it worse. Didn’t your momma ever tell you to stay out of bar-room fights until you understand the issues?
Anyhow, that’s my take … so sue me …
w.
sturgishooper says:
June 23, 2014 at 10:15 pm
I do however object to the scheme which you wish to substitute
The revised SSN [or Wolf Number as we shall call it] is based on careful comparisons and review by many experts, so is forced upon us by the data. We have little choice or wiggle room.
You can only object if you have done a similar analysis and thereby come to a different result [which we would love to see]. If not, your reaction is just agenda-driven inertia based on ignorance.