Joe Bastardi Responds To Tim McCarver’s Home Run Claim

The article below is Joe Bastardi’s response to Tim McCarver’s claim that global warming is causing more home runs because warm air is thinner.. The only thing I would add is that part of his theory seems easy enough to test. Are there more proportionally home runs scored during afternoon games than night games?

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Guest post by Joe Bastardi

The recent comment by Tim McCarver that climate change is leading to more home runs  and a defense of it in some circles shows two things in addition to what is an absurd comment.

1.  The bologna  about climate change has gotten so bad, it is in the psyche of people even  broadcasting sporting events and
2. the people defending this will  ignore the overwhelming facts to push their points.

First of all it is an absurd comment along the lines  that one can argue changes in uniforms  are just as much responsible. Every team has changed  its uniform from the old days, they are not exactly the way they were, they may be made of different  material, heck I have seen some games where people play in shorts.  Its one of those comments  where someone can say anything and then   say, okay, prove to me absolutely its not true. “ So Mr, Jones,  just when did you stop  spying on your neighbor”  , as if you were, but then then the person says, okay prove it.

So again, you want to defend that idea against the fact that stadiums are smaller,  players are bigger and stronger, there are more teams  leading to more variance in strength, on paper it seems absurd, because it is. And the data backs me up. In the period 1931-1960, when the pdo and amo were in similar cyclical phases are they are now ( the pdo was warm till the late 40s, then it flipped,  it was warm  1978-2007 then flipped,   the atlantic  overall is similar to the way it was in the  50s now, so in the whole comparison, we are in the latter stages of the warm cycle we were in the 50s)  the  comparison of temps  plainly shows the weather was warmer in baseball season  ( I will use  April to October,  for one, then  June-August for the other)

Keep in mind that temps before the satellite era keep getting adjusted down, I suspect that if we had satellites trained on the 1931-1960 period, given some of the outrageous  heat that occurred then, it would be hotter ( example: Des Moines Iowa has not broken a July record high since the 1950s!)   Tortured logic trying to get around this fact that its warmer now so it means more home runs is  absurd even on the global level.  Mc Carver was using American basedball  to  back his opinion, so the data set has to be American baseball,  not a global temp, which by the way is suspect anyway compared to now. Just how much data control do you think went on globally  during the great depression, world war 2 and then the cold war, compared to now   with satellites. If you think for one second other nations were as concerned as the US   with temperatures then ,then you are living in a utopian world. The point is WITH SATELLITES, WE NOW SEE WHAT IS GOING ON. The most accurate temperature record began in 1978,  when the  the PDO flipped to warm.

Given that the heat capacity of the oceans is 1000 times that of air, and co2 occupies .04 % of the atmosphere, with mans total contribution by  DOE figures  3-5 % of that, or  .00002,

I would say that the oceans are the shooting match here

But think about what the WAPO defense of this is and you can see how it makes sense they would do that. They throw out the fact that in Japan, the greatest home run hitters all retired before the  1980s were through!  They throw out the fact that  players are bigger and stronger and eat better, Can you imagine the MICK  if  he wasn’t drinking  and was training the way these guys do?  Babe Ruth was the biggest guy on his team  but at  6-3  195 in his hey day he would have been  no   heavier than half the guys on his team. If climate change is doing this, then HR hitters should train and pitchers should start throwing knuckleballs. Arguably, the greatest knuckleballer of all time Hoyt Wilhelm, came well before global warming.

But in defending McCarver, you see the typical mindset of an AGW /climate change/climate disruption person. Presented with a set of facts  for instance this

Co2 vs  temp/temp last 3 years since pdo flip,  strength of correlation of oceans to temp, solar to temp

Or this

Snow cover increase n hem since pdo flip

or the fact they hide s hem ice, by not bringing it up and the n hem ice cap is nowhere near gone  as their ilk was screaming in  2007

or public funding of  climate change depts. Far outweighs  private donations

or that there are no hockey sticks in Chinese studies

and my personal favorite the lack of a trapping hot spot at 400 mb and we just had record cold there late last year, they will ignore all the data saying co2 has NOTHING  to do with this, in favor of  saying a gas that occupies  .0004 of the atmosphere, which has  1/1000^th the heat capacity of the ocean,  that is 1/400^th of the greenhouse gasses, water vapor being the prime one and it seems like the oceans are a good source of water vapor, wouldn’t you say, and that humans have only put .00002 into the air  is running the show

So in spite of all the evidence, including ironically far east evidence about  home  run hitters,  ironic because of the hockey stick  link ( apparently in  japan, the lighter air theory doesn’t work, but works here even though it was factually warmer before)

They will defend  anything that claims their God is  in control

Which is why this is more like religion than science. A perfect example

Is there no answer, or no subject they don’t think they own? Which also gives you an insight,  this is about control.

I’ll end with this, a quote from  Richard Feyman,