Building more hitter-friendly parks? Hitters lifting more weights to get stronger? Steroids… Not factors. Sean Hackbarth was watching when Tim McCarver leaped from sports commentator to science reporter:
On Fox Sports’ coverage of Saturday’s Milwaukee Brewers-St. Louis Cardinals baseball game analyst Tim McCarver theorized about why home runs seems to be flying out of ball parks. He thinks it’s global warming/climate change:
Tim McCarver: “[T]he air is thinning…. There have been climatic changes over the last 50 years…. I think that’s one of the reasons balls are carrying much better now.”
Joe Buck [Fox Sports play-by-play announcer]: “So that’s your ‘inconvenient truth’ about it?”
McCarver: “You’re going to find it out one of these days, yes.”
For what it’s worth, the air isn’t “thinning.” The greenhouse effect is supposedly the result of having too much stuff up in the atmosphere, not too little. McCarver is confusing the so-called ozone hole, which is probably periodic and related to the solar cycle, with the entire atmosphere. But if the air was “thinning,” the effects would be greater than a few home runs in baseball parks. Earth would probably get cooler, as there would be less atmosphere to trap and hold heat from the sun.
someone forgot to text this to albert pujols
McCarver’s statement has precisely the same scientific value as the climate models published by the IPCC. That is to say, they are equally worthless. In McCarver’s defense, at least he is earnest in his ignorance just like so many others who really aren’t keeping up with the collapse of the AGW fairy tale. I’m pretty sure most of the eggheads at the IPCC know by now they are completely full of it.
One can always tell who the lemmings are by what comes out of their mouths.
I guess it’s tough to keep your own thoughts when swimming in the media propaganda cesspool. Interesting to see who gets herded into the camp of the enemy. ‘So many people believe in globa warming, it must be true!’ Right? Poor Tim has a hard enough time keeping baseball facts straight, he should be more reluctant to speak about things he knows nothing about. Since when did ignorance ever stop someone from saying something stupid? Tim needs help.
Careful. McCarver is correct in saying that if the atmosphere was overall hotter the density overall would be lower, and hence less drag on baseballs, hence more homeruns.
*However*, if this was true–a thinning effect noticeable at sea level altitudes (and it would have to be)–we would expect at *least* two more things. First, curveballs would be less likely to break, as they rely on lift fot that and lift relies in part on density. This can be empirically verified if it is happening or not. Second, the FAA and ICAO would be going bonkers, because airliners would be overruning runways on takeoffs all the time, due to the less dense air (“high, hot, humid” being things that decrease aircraft takeoff performance).
I submit this is not occuring, which then means Tim McCarver is the same idiot as the one who had an anti-Atlanta bias in 1992. Q.E.D.
Basically, as a followup–I understand being a Progressive makes one sort of an all-around genius, but any one claiming that there are atmospheric profile effects of a practical nature (stratosphere and troposphere) occurring right now due to climatic warming has to understand aviation is naturally tied to the atmosphere, and thus large-scale changes in density are going to show up as shifts of billions and tens of billions of dollars in bottom lines, because of more fuel needed for less efficient engines and wings. This is not in the least sense arguable. It is just basic aeronautics 101. It would be like arguing if gravity existed (well… one *can* argue that, but you have to know something to do so…)
Thus, if the airlines are not showing dramatically increased costs, the air ain’t ‘thinning’. Period. All Tim McCarver has done is apparently shown a profound ignorance arising out of needs to score political points.
Going further, and perhaps bringing grief to those who do not need it—in aerospace, there is something called a “standard atmosphere model”, used to predict values for temperature, pressure, and density (among other things) throughout the atmosphere. Because of its use in aerospace engineering and aviation operations, it is not just a scientific product but an engineering one as well, and thus must be changed when needed, but only when needed. Since lives and money depend on its accuracy, it is accurate.
I thus submit that if there have been no changes made in the standard atmospheric model that are attributable to global warming, it is because the purveyors of such beliefs do not have the data needed to justify such a change–that they cannot pass peer review once outside their own community of specialists. And this means then such warming of the atmosphere has not in fact occurred to any significant/repeatable level, because if it had it would be readily observable (with repeatable measurements) and the standard model would demand such a change, and immediately, because the change would be noticeable in the troposphere–where both weather occurs and aircraft fly (in addition to the stratosphere)–and thus aerospace vehicle actual performance would be different than predictions. Thus no strange deviation in aircraft fleet performances—>no standard atmosphere model change—> no significant observable warming. Period. Q.E.D.
Oh, I forgot: Have a Nice Day.
Other things perhaps observable if the atmosphere was overall hotter–increased drag on LEO satellites. This is also veriafiable.
Basically, I don’t think AGW folks have the mass of data needed to convince anyone outside their own climatology field, which appears inbred–though I admit I could be wrong. But yet we are supposed to change the way all men live on their say-so, when they can’t even seemingly justify a change in atmosphere models? Please.
My bedroom floor is 3 feet above mean high water. I’ll be sure to let you know if my feet get wet in the morning. Then you can begin to worry.
Wait a sec…naw. the water is still in the crick. Right where it’s been since I was 8.
Boy, you sure did a lot of work. Very nice. You know, of course, that you can wear yourself ragged pointing out all the global warming foolishness. It is a very target-rich environment.
If it were AGW due to CO2, wouldn’t the additional density of the CO2 >increase< the overall density of the air?
There were a lot of HRs yesterday because the Brewers pitching sucks (and I say that as a big-time Brewers fan).
In 1996, there were 13 players with 40 or more HRs.
In 2011, there were 2.
The reason? The league’s policies on juicing up.
sounds like tim claims to know a lot about baseball dynamics, among other things. but what’s a guy to do? you go to school, cut out all the partying so you can study hard and get that hard science degree, and the best job you can find is in sports reporting. go figure.
suggestion: always wear a hat while sitting exposed at the game. my old hard drinking bb coach always said it helps protect from “tonguestroke”.
– brain surgeons.
May as well say all the exhalations at baseball stadiums from the breath of 25,000 fans has created a race of cyborg-like, over-muscled power hitters and throwers. I stopped watching baseball when I discovered they’re needle addicts. It’s like discovering all my favorite novels were written by computers.
Or an infinite number of monkeys!
(I really shouldn’t bring the Obama administration into this).
McCarver must have gotten hit in the head a lot while he was catching. I turn off the sound when he’s calling the game.
McCarver is a moron. As anyone with even a high school level science education could tell you there is no direct relationship between atmospheric temperature and density. The atmosphere is a complex mixture of gases and compounds. Humid air is actually less dense than dry air, and an increase in CO2 concentrations would make the atmosphere more dense. Baseball is full of folklore and old wives’ tales. We always hear the comment about how a hit ball does not travel far when the air is “heavy” (ie. humid), when the opposite should be true.
Of course, this is not the dumbest scientific theory I’ve ever heard McCarver spout. I once heard him claim that when a hit ball skips off of an astroturf surface it actually picks up speed. Imagine that, a whole new branch of physics based on energy gains in momentum transfer of the McCarver Effect.
Favorite McCarver anecdote: the Cincinnati Reds won the World series in 1990. McCarver was a sideline reporter, and was trying to get fan reaction as everyone was piling out of the stadium. So, LIVE on nationwide network TV, he is stopping people and thrusting a microphone into their faces.
McCarver grabs some teenage long-haired guy in the crowd, and asks him “So how about a female perspective of the Reds victory?” The crowd around him just stops, not believing that McCarver could mistake this young guy for a girl, just because the young guy has long hair. So McCarver repeats the question, and the guy just says “Hey, I’m a DUDE! Go REDS!”
The network cut back to the stunned press box announcing team, and there were several long seconds before one of them just goes on to another storyline, completely ignoring McCarver’s remark.
Why were there so many home runs in the past 20 years over any other time in baseball? Expansion has diluted pitching, batters are lifting weights and taking PEDs, and ballparks are built with closer outfield fences. For the environmentally sensitive, unicorns have been farting more, creating an updraft causing more home runs.
McCarver has always been an idiot like Olberman, he thinks he is a lot smarter than he really is. Every time I hear him on a game it amazes me how he has kept his job. He has always been a gasbag and now he is an old, senile gasbag. He is the reason I refuse to watch Fox baseball games. His partner Joe Buck isn’t much better, he would be unemployed if he wasn’t Jack’s son. Nepotism is usually a terrible idea.
But Mcguire and Sosa’s records were set in the 90′s. And Bonds got his over a decade ago with no real challengers recently. Funny how those home run battles all seemed to stop when the stricter drug testing was established. Must just be a coincidence.
I like them french fried potatoes!
Only one problem with the theory. There is a declining aggregate of home runs in the last 10 years. Most likely due to steroids being shunned and banned.
Olbermann, Bryant Gumbel, and now this chucklehead. What is it about sportscasters (who inhabit one rung on the journalistic ladder above the guy who reads the weather) that makes them think they are anything other than halfwits? And it’s even worse over the other side of the pond, where sporting commentators have such a reputation for incoherent nonsense that the satirical magazine Private Eye has a feature (called Colemanballs in honour of one of the genre’s most famous practitioners, David Coleman) which catalogues the idiocy that comes out of their mouths.