Oceanography | December 2018
QUARTERDECK
A recent tweet by a public official declaring that record- breaking
cold in New York City over Thanksgiving demonstrated that
our climate isn’t actually warming prompted me to contemplate
whether the general public understands the significance of long-
term trends and the pitfalls in drawing conclusions from one
data point. I think people understand this concept quite well.
As discussed in my March column (https://doi.org/ 10.5670/
oceanog.2018.100), people use math and science all of the time
without realizing it.
For fun, I took a shot at using baseball statistics as a possi-
ble way to help a broad audience interpret a plot of long-term
increases in global temperature. Baseball is perfect subject to
use—at least in the United States. Its fans are famous for ana-
lyzing everything and anything about the game and its play-
ers. Numbers, articles about the numbers, and articles about the
articles about the numbers abound on the Internet. It was sim-
ple to find and then plot home runs for each year since 1920.
For readers who are baseball aficionados, I’ll mention that the
graph begins at 1920 because that was the year the spitball (which
suppressed offense) was outlawed and just after the so-called
“dead-ball era” concluded. I didn’t want to skew the overall aver-
age number of home runs hit. And, yes, the total includes both
American and National Leagues, even though they weren’t using
the same baseball until 1934.
I got lucky in my choice for this attempted analogy. Figure 1
clearly shows a long-term increase in the number of home runs
hit per year compared to the average from 1920–20181. There
were brief periods of offensive decline (pitchers dominated in the
1960s) and some extreme outlier years of offensive futility (most
famously 1968), but the long-term trend toward more power hit-
ting is undeniable. Indeed, the home run data plot in Figure 1
somewhat resembles the plot of yearly global surface temperature
from 1900–2017 compared to the 1981–2010 average (Figure 2).
Even as increasingly severe wildfires and hurricanes illumi-
nate the realities of climate change, scientists still struggle in
public debates—not to mention cable television wars—perhaps
because we are not breaking down the complex climate issue
into simple enough bits and pieces that the public can more eas-
ily grasp. Tangible, everyday analogies for different important
ocean sciences and related topics might resonate with the pub-
lic. Perhaps if our community were to compile and share talking
points that work for audiences during public talks, we would all
benefit. TOS would be happy to post on our website any notes
and graphics you might submit for all to use. Consistent with
the international nature of our community, analogies from other
sports are welcome. Soccer—or should I say football—anyone?
Ellen S. Kappel, Editor
Global Temperatures and…Baseball?
1 Readers who are curious as to why there is an increasing trend in the number of home runs hit over time have their pick of theories. Some writers believe the uptick in home
runs post-2015 is due to a change in the composition and construction of the baseball, according to Ben Lindbergh and Mitchel Lichtman of the Ringer (https://www.theringer.
com/2017/6/14/16044264/2017-mlb-home-run-spike-juiced-ball-testing-reveal-155cd21108bc). At the same time, batters who joined the so-called “launch angle revolution”
adopted uppercut swings that generate greater power, often at the cost of reducing batting average and increasing strikeouts (https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/
sports/mlb-launch-angles-story/?utm_term=.bf1cc76d6013).
FIGURE 1. Home runs per year as compared to the 1920–2018 aver-
age. Data from the Baseball Almanac: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/
hitting/hihr6.shtml.
FIGURE 2. Yearly global surface temperature from 1900–2017
compared to the 1981–2010 average. The different colors repre-
sent different research groups’ analysis of the historical tempera-
ture record. Modified from https://www.climate.gov/news-features/
understanding-climate/climate- change-global-temperature.
–3,000
–2,000
–1,000
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
1900
1920
1940
1960
1980
2000
2018
Diference from Average (Home Run Hits)
BASEBALL: Number of Home Runs Hit Per Year
Compared to the 1920–2018 Average
TEMPERATURE: Global Surface Temperature Per Year
Compared to the 1981–2010 Average
1920–2018 Average
–1.5
–1.0
–0.5
0.0
0.5
1.0
1900
1920
1940
1960
1980
2000
2017
Diference from Average (°C)
1981–2010 Average
–3,000
–2,000
–1,000
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
1900
1920
1940
1960
1980
2000
2018
Diference from Average (Home Run Hits)
BASEBALL: Number of Home Runs Hit Per Year
Compared to the 1920–2018 Average
TEMPERATURE: Global Surface Temperature Per Year
Compared to the 1981–2010 Average
1920–2018 Average
–1.5
–1.0
–0.5
0.0
0.5
1.0
1900
1920
1940
1960
1980
2000
2017
Diference from Average (°C)
1981–2010 Average