Those Martins

I very much enjoyed Jonah Goldberg’s talk last night at the UW. He touched on a lot of topics during the talk, but kept things moving light and quick by constantly throwing in jokes and quips (“I apologize for drinking so much water up here, it’s just that I smoked all that pot before I came in.”). The talk took place in Grainger Hall, Room 1100. It was a fairly typical, medium-sized lecture hall, about half full.

I admit, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the rest of the audience, Jonah being conservative and Madison being, well, not. Everyone was very attentive however and seemed to enjoy the evening as much as I did. The Badger Herald published a write-up this morning: Goldberg slams liberal media bias. The write-up is generally very good. I do have a slight issue with some of the content at the end:

In relation to his criticisms on natural disasters, Goldberg said the number of hurricanes has not increased in recent years and the data “flatly does not support it.”

But Brian Shactman, chairman of College Democrats, said the numbers of Hurricane Katrina speak for themselves, and pictures do not lie. Shactman also said everyone saw the faulty relief response by the government, and added it is the “typical Republican response to blame the liberal media.”

Shactman said the increase in the number of hurricanes each year and the warming of ocean water temperatures necessitates a deeper look into the possible effects of global warming.

This part of the article is somewhat misleading. The reporter allows Shactman to say that “the numbers speak for themselves”, “pictures do not lie”, and there has been an “increase in the number of hurricanes each year”. Jonah spent about 10 minutes of his speech refuting these very points. He pointed out that coastal areas are far more built up now than they were 50 years ago. Ergo, coastal hurricanes cause far more damage than they did 50 years ago. The strength of the hurricanes is the same, but today they’re blowing over “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” instead of shanties and moonshine factories. The numbers may not lie, but they’re certainly misleading.

Secondly, Jonah specifically addressed the question of an increase in hurricanes. He pointed out that hurricane intensity is on a 30-year cycle. Right now, we are in the high side of the cycle. Later on, we will move to the low side of the cycle. Again, the number of hurricanes may be increasing, but it would be misleading to imply that global warming is the only cause. (This is a great example of confirmation bias, which is another topic that Jonah covered extensively in his talk.)

I would hate to imply that the Badger Herald (or just Joanna Pliner) is biased, but I do find it interesting that they allowed the chairman of the College Democrats to get in some emotionally loaded statements while printing only that Goldberg said the data “flatly does not support it”. The end result is to portray Goldberg as a man who is unable to see the blatantly obvious and who has no response to Democratic logic. Had I written the article, I would have printed Shactman’s statements but also printed Goldberg’s response to those statements. Alas, I am merely a blogger and cannot hope to compete with objective reporters.

UPDATE: Several Madison bloggers were in attendance last night: Uncle Jimbo, Bob Thelan / The Freedom Fighter and both members of Letters in Bottles. Apparently Ann Althouse was also in attendence, although she didn’t blog about it. I’ve really got to get my blog back up and running so I can actually hang out with the bloggers. It would be somewhat awkward to say “Hi, I’m a blogger too! Well, no, I don’t actually have a blog at the moment…”.

UPDATE, the second: Jonah mentioned Groundhog Day as one of his favorite movies. He also mentioned that he’d written a column, last year, about the movie. This morning, National Review was kind enough to post A Movie for All Time.