{"id":252620,"date":"2023-04-14T13:33:48","date_gmt":"2023-04-14T11:33:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=252620"},"modified":"2023-04-14T13:33:51","modified_gmt":"2023-04-14T11:33:51","slug":"climate-expert-claims-climate-change-causes-home-runs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=252620","title":{"rendered":"Climate Expert Claims Climate Change Causes Home Runs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From \u00a0The Honest Broker<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Roger Pielke Jr.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Last week a new\u00a0study<\/a>\u00a0claimed to have identified a causal relationship between climate change and home runs in Major League Baseball. The paper \u2014\u00a0Global warming, home runs, and the future of America\u2019s pastime<\/a>, by Callahan et al. \u2014 asserted, \u201cSeveral hundred additional home runs per season are projected due to future warming.\u201d Looking to the past, the paper asserts, \u201chuman-caused climate change decreased home runs between 1962 and 1995 and increased them thereafter.\u201d Predictably, the legacy media loved it, as you can see below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On Twitter, I commented<\/a> that climate change didn\u2019t have the same HR-boosting effects in other baseball leagues, with no similar home run trends in Japan, the AAA league or the NCAA \u2014 where in each instance home runs have declined in recent decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the authors of the paper contacted me, I suppose after seeing my Tweets, and explained:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Our model is not trying to predict home runs. It\u2019s trying to estimate temperature\u2019s effect on home runs. Those are, empirically, different endeavors.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Yes, I agree. However, contrary to what the author told me via email, the paper is centered on projecting future home runs \u2014 it even predicts an increase in home runs by MLB ballpark. The paper states clearly, and erroneously:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

[T]hese model experiments allow us to quantify the influence of historical climate change on home run totals. They also allow us to project how home runs may change in the future with warming.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In response, this is what I said to the paper\u2019s author about their methodology and misleading description of their methods:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Your methodology is formally a sensitivity analysis, which seeks to isolate a statistical relationship of temperature and home runs. I agree that such a sensitivity analysis simply does not allow for meaningful predictions or projections of future home runs . . . Of course, climate research is rife with studies (and reporting, such as the Wash Post article on your study) that confuse single-variable sensitivity analysis with meaningful projections (e.g., the effects of climate on crop yields is a textbook example of this).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The author, in his exchange with me, also explained clearly and accurately that there could be other factors beyond climate change that might explain the declines in other leagues that are at odds with the trends in home runs in MLB. Indeed. Were I a peer reviewer of this paper I would have required that they repeat their analysis with data from Japan, AAA and NCAA, all of which is readily available, as are relevant climate data and model projections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patrick Brown of The Breakthrough Institute points out<\/a> that the new study, taken at face value (which I do not, but let\u2019s just posit that), asserts that since the 1970s an increase of about 0.04 HRs per game can be attributed to climate change out of a total increase of 0.75 HRs per game \u2014 or about 5% of the total increase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, a more accurate reading of the paper\u2019s quantitative conclusions is that climate change is a tiny, even insignificant, factor in MLB home run trends, easily swamped by everything else that can affect home runs. In our exchange, the paper\u2019s co-author seems to have acknowledged this: \u201cI think it\u2019s straightforward to reason that one can have both a decline in HRs \u2026 while also having warming to date make a small contribution to enhanced HR likelihood.\u201d Nuanced and accurate, to be sure, but not the stuff of headlines in newspapers, or these days apparently, representations of research in scientific journals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some more numbers: Since 2016 (minus the shortened pandemic season of 2020) MLB has averaged about 5,800 home runs per year. And the year-to-year variation is large, with a standard deviation of about 500 \u2014 with a low of 5,215 HRs in 2022 and high of 6,776 in 2019. The paper projects an increase of 467 HRs in 2100 \u2014 77 years from now \u2014 under SSP5-8.5 (yes, that scenario, don\u2019t even get me started!). The century-long increase is less than observed variability since 2016 and about 1\/3 of the differences between high and low HR totals over 3 seasons. If you use a more plausible scenario (like SSP2-4.5) the projections are even smaller compared to variability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking back 77 years<\/a>, there were 1,215 HRs in MLB (among 16 teams each playing 154 games). Last year there were exactly 4,000 more \u2014 5,215 (among 30 teams each playing 162 games). That represents an increase of more than 100%<\/strong> in home runs per game over 77 years. Even accepting SSP5-8.5 and the paper\u2019s conclusions at face value, the projected increase in home runs due to climate change is only a few percent, which is tiny in historical context as well as compared to year-to-year and decade-to-decade variation and change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No matter how you slice it, even using the most extreme scenario and taking the paper\u2019s conclusions at face value, climate change is just not a big deal for home runs in baseball. And that should be OK, as not everything has to be reduced to climate. Yet, the paper concludes dramatically:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cMore broadly, our findings are emblematic of the widespread influence anthropogenic global warming has already had on all aspects of life.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

A lesson here is that we have created strong incentives in science, in the promotion of science and in journalism to reduce everything to climate. If you are on the climate beat you are most certainly not going to be discussing steroids in baseball, seam size, humidor practices or any of the other myriad factors related to home run production. The climate beat needs climate stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These incentives help us to understand what gets published, promoted and clicked. These incentives are also incredibly distorting to both journalism and, increasingly, to research. Baseball and climate might seem like a silly topic, but these dynamics can be found on far more important issues involving climate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my exchange with the paper\u2019s co-author I complimented him on their work:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

A paper is important to the degree that it gets people thinking and talking, so congrats! You’ve got an important paper here. Fun also.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And I mean that. The authors may not welcome or agree with the lessons that I take from their paper, but I have little doubt that they know exactly what I\u2019m talking about. All of us in academia are aware of these incentives. I suspect journalists are aware of them also, especially those on the climate beat, needing to endlessly produce climate content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As\u00a0Mike Hulme has written<\/a>, \u201cClimate reductionism is a limited and deficient methodology for accessing the future.\u201d This new paper on baseball and climate change offers an excellent entry point to engaging issues of climate reductionism and the seeming totalizing influence it has in science, journalism and how we think about climate science and policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week a new\u00a0study\u00a0claimed to have identified a causal relationship between climate change and home runs in Major League Baseball.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":252849,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691818374,691818056,691818090,691818433],"class_list":{"0":"post-252620","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-climate-change","10":"tag-climate-warning","11":"tag-home-runs","13":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/00images2097-5c6d27a80ed84.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-13Iw","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":252622,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=252622","url_meta":{"origin":252620,"position":0},"title":"Wrong, 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