“…thinner air” cited by sports broadcaster
From DeadSpin’s Timothy Burke:
Tim McCarver Blames Global Warming For The Increase In Major League Home Runs
We’d normally save this sort of thing for McCarve’d Up (which will be back next week after being pre-empted for NFL draft coverage) but Tim McCarver said one of the stupidest things ever spoken on a television broadcast today, blaming global warming for “making the air thin” and thus leading to a rise in home runs.
Climate change, or in McCarver’s words “climactic change,” is the culprit (and not, say, steroids, the age of which McCarver insists is over). Global warming is a real thing (climate change deniers are already giving McCarver a beatdown online) but the theory it’s led to increased major league offensive production is one of the most insane things ever asserted by a professional broadcaster. And this man is in the Hall of Fame! [Fox]
h/t to WUWT reader Eric Neilsen
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Former MLB player and broadcaster Tim McCarver…Image from Wikipedia
Too many balls to the head?
UPDATE: It gets dumber. MLB has blocked the video on YouTube citing copyright violations…except that under fair use exceptions to the copyright law, criticism of boneheadedness is allowed, especially when using short snippets like this video clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSRwnY3eHKU&feature=player_embedded
And these two incidents, combined with exorbitant prices to support exorbitant salaries, are why I don’t go to baseball games anymore. The great American pastime has lost its mojo.
Don’t ever ask McCarver “How stupid can you be?”
Evidently he takes that as a challenge.
I just love this latest catastrope.
When I read McCarver’s statement I felt like Earl Weaver in the following clip (warning: very foul language). As a matter of fact, I’m sure many of the partisans in the AGW debate have at various times felt the same way.
goldie says:
April 29, 2012 at 1:55 am
Can this guy chew and walk at the same time?
~Apparently not at sea-level, Goldie.
However he Would have a hard time doing both at the top of Rocky Mountain National Park- 12,005 feet. There’s just not enough oxygen to do both. I should know, I tried it. Don’t work too well 😛
Can any present or ex artillery, sniper types step into the discussion here for real world experience in atmospheric effects trajectory and distance.
My take is that he believes “the warming is allowing more home runs”.
Plot home runs as related to temperature and humidity in the stadium.
It won’t prove “global warming” but it might show more home runs on hot and humid days.
Isn’t Tim McCarver the baseball analyst who sees cause and effect where none exists? When on the air, he is biologically incapable of remaining silent for more than 10 seconds. Someday I expect him to claim a batter swung and missed because his socks were too tight. The next time you’re watching a game with Tim as the color analyst, pay attention to his inane characterizations of what is happening on the field.
32 ° F = 0 ° C = 273.15 K
Using the numeric keypad that works here;using the numbers on the main keyboard not so much …
(Dell GX270 w/Dell PS2 keyboard and Win Xp SP3)
.
Could it be that the umps have squeezed the strike zone to boost fan interest much the same as the NFL has put an end to pass rushing?
@Mike Busby and others
FYI, It is referred to as the “World” Series because the championship was originally sponsored by New York World Newspaper
(http://www.snopes.com/business/names/worldseries.asp)
I just read the snopes in detail. The faster one admits s/he screwed up, the faster the taste of crow goes away. There goes another boyhood myth factoid down the drain
_Jim says:
April 29, 2012 at 6:15 am
What considerations for load and take-off ‘roll’ does a pilot make for: a) hot, humid day vs b) just a hot day?
Don’t forget the in-flight corrections — your true airspeed (TAS) will be higher than your actual groundspeed due to the pressure differential. Less critical in flight than during takeoff or landing, because your stall speed will be higher in hot-humid conditions.
Not a good idea to judge your approach speed visually when the temperature and dew point are getting within “three degrees of separation”…
We will be back in a minute after this message from our global warming sponsor…
Chris… Cold, dry air offers more resistance to a baseball, reducing its flight.
I don’t have a problem with your explanation of what you said concerning density but I did stumble on the above sentence. I’m not disagreeing that the lower density of air (which accompanies the increased water vapour and higher temperature of air) doesn’t promote longer flight due to the inverse relationship between drag and air density….but by only looking at just this one aspect, it ignores several other important factors. For one, the viscosity of the air actually is reduced at lower temperatures. For another, the ball has greater buoyancy in the higher density air. Both of these factors should actually promote an increased distance, no?
I think the difficulty with understanding how things really react is that it is very difficult to look at a specific aspect in isolation i.e. the elasticity of the ball (and the bat for that matter) both change with temperature as does the control of the pitcher’s hands and the stiffness of the batter’s hands to name just a few. This essentially needs a totally controlled test that would eliminate or equalize all the factors in order to just look at the specific factor of what the difference in air does to the flight of the ball. This would mean setting up a machine that could launch a ball at a specific angle and speed (say 15 degrees at 95 mph) on an absolutely windless day. The ball for use in the machine would have to come from a controlled storage where it was kept at specific temperature and humidity. The test would first be done for the low density case of high temperature and high humidity. Then the test would have to be done for the high density case of low temperature and low humidity….. If all the factors were equalized such that the only difference is temperature and humidity, I suspect that the low temperature low density conditions will be the one that gives the furthest distance. My guess is that it is the other factors that make for more home runs in warm weather that have nothing to do with the air……but I’ll also be the first to suggest that such a controlled test could prove me wrong because there was some other factor at play here other than the ones mentioned.
As with claims about climate change, it’s always useful to look at the actual statistics.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/NL/bat.shtml
National League
year HR/game
2012 0.81
2011 0.88
2010 0.93
2009 0.96
2008 1.01
2007 1.04
2006 1.10
http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/AL/bat.shtml
Americal League
year HR/game
2012 1.10
2011 1.00
2010 0.97
2009 1.13
2008 1.00
2007 0.99
2006 1.12
So obviously, Naltional League cities are cooling while American League cities have the same temeprature as in 2006.
Does UEA give honorary degrees?
There has been a 20% reduction in the number of home runs hit since 1999-2000 :
http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/bat.shtml
Using McCarver’s “logic” (assuming that isn’t an oxymoron) this must be indicative of a cooling world……
nc says:
April 29, 2012 at 8:19 am
Can any present or ex artillery, sniper types step into the discussion here for real world experience in atmospheric effects trajectory and distance.
Yes. Artillery accuracy (from a surveyed point) depends on such esoteric variables as the temperature of the stored propellant, prevailing winds, free air temperature, altitude of of the projectile’s flight, barometric pressure, ambient temperature, relative humidity, and the curvature of the Earth, all of which will affect range and time of flight, which in turn, affects projectile drift.
Then, after you’ve made all the necessary computations and plugged in the corrections (actually, a computer takes care of that these days), normal dispersion steps in and you miss hitting the pickle barrel by ten feet. But since the bursting radius is fifty meters or greater, you still turn it into splinters…
Let me be more blunt: any ballplayer, including me who continued playing league ball until age 61, will tell you that you can hit a ball farther in warm weather than in cold and farther at higher elevation than at lower– considerably farther, like 50 feet, not just a few inches.
Perhaps the climate induced shortage of Bulgarian prostitutes has enabled the players to concentrate more on their training?
Not only did McCarver (being generous) mistake weather for climate, the weather turned vicious right after the game, killing 1 and injuring 120 on stadium grounds. http://meteorologicalmusings.blogspot.com/2012/04/noted-climate-scientist-tim-mccarver.html
Surely as sea levels are rising, the air should be getting heavier? Only saying!
The ball always seemed to carry better for me when it was hot and humid out. I don’t have a model to tell me what to think, only my observations 🙂
Foul ball!!!! Look out!!!! Oh Tim, that’s gotta hurt! Off the noggin!
Smells like another limousine liberal. Him and his algoric ilk know what’s best for everyone else not for themselves though, they’re wealthy jet-setters.
“Hurrumph! I wonder how large is the maid’s carbon footprint?”
pat:
This is only true if there is no spin on the ball.
Batters try and get “under the ball”, generating back spin. This actually produces lift, and you get more lift in warm, moist air than in dry, cool air, exactly because of the increased viscosity, and this results in a longer flight trajectory than for with “no spin”. (Hence there are more homers in the hot summer months than in say April, at least in outdoor stadiums.)
This goes under the moniker of the Magnus effect. (The illustration at WIKI shows the example for a ball moving with “forward spin”, which applies to e.g., “sinkers”, and is drawn in the framework of the ball being stationary and the air moving around it, which might be a bit confusing at first. A normally thrown ball has back spin, resulting in a visible “hop”, assuming the thrower has any throwing arm at all).