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6 6 July 2017
P
ART OF the 1970s was striking advertising.
‘Kilkenny Mart’ was a poster featuring a pow-
erfully built bull with a ring through its nose.
The unsubtle slogan: ‘No bull in the Irish Farm-
ers Journal’. The old Kilkenny Mart is long
gone: its successor the multi-million euro Cillín Hill facil-
ity is situated a few kilometres outside the city.
The Farmers Journal, however, rumbles on. Founded
in 1948, it is approaching its seventieth birthday and, in
an age of plummeting newspaper sales, continues to
have a robust weekly circulation of nearly 70,000.
And while never at the journalistic bleeding edge, the
Journal has enjoyed grudging respect, both for its com
-
mercial savvy and for wielding significant political clout
in the agribusiness sector. In recent months, however,
the proverbial bull has not only returned to the Journal,
it has run amok.
You cannot understand the Journal without reference
to Matt Dempsey, who edited it for 25 years until 2013.
Today, he is chairman of the Agricultural Trust, the body
that controls the Journal, and retains a weekly column,
so while 39-year old Justin McCarthy (with no journalis
-
tic experience beyond the Journal) is editor, there is little
doubt as to who is the power behind the throne.
Dempsey is also a former president of the Royal Dublin
Society (RDS) and it appears to be here that he had a
meeting of minds with retired UCD meteorologist, Ray
Bates, in their shared interest in shielding Irish
agriculture from the need to cut emissions to tackle cli-
mate change. In July 2016, Dempsey’s RDS and the
Institute of International and European Affairs jointly
launched a joint report outlining the “political commit-
ment required to establish Ireland as global leader in
climate-smart agriculture”.
The Advisory Committee for this project was drawn
from a wide range of interest groups, and included
Bates, who by then was making frequent political pro-
nouncements in public on the need for Ireland to not do
too much to tackle climate change for fear that it might
impair the aggressive expansionary plans of the beef
and dairy sectors.
Many eyebrows were raised as to why a former Met
Eireann scientist appeared far more interested in the
wellbeing of Irish agriculture rather than in articulating
the mainstream scientific community’s alarm at the dan-
gerous trajectory of climate change and the existential
risks it poses for life on Earth.
Then, on May 5 last, the pieces of the puzzle began to
fall into place. That evening, a shadowy new group styl
-
ing itself the Irish Climate Science Forum (ICSF) had its
inaugural meeting in a hotel in south Dublin. Their
invited guest speaker was the noted US climate denier,
Richard Lindzen. As a statement of intent, their choice of
a hard-line contrarian could hardly have been clearer.
This reporter attempted to attend as a member of the
press, but was rebuffed by the organisers, who explained
Farmers
JournAlternativeFacts
Seventy years of credibility on farmers’
interests undermined by makey-uppy
climate-change articles
The real purpose of
Lindzen’s talk appears
to have been to provide
ammunition for a new
war on climate science,
with Matt Dempsey
and the Journal willing
accomplices
by John gibbons
ENvIRONMENT
July 2017 6 7
it was a “strictly private event” and among the undesira-
bles to be refused access were “politicians, media
and NGOs”.
The ICSF describes itself as “a voluntary group of Irish
scientists, engineers and other professionals, currently
in a formative stage”. It plans
to carry out what it says is
“neutral, independent analy-
sis of the latest climate
research with the purpose of
better informing climate and
energy policies in Ireland”.
The 50 or so invited guests,
including several current and
former Met Éireann staff,
were almost exclusively
hand-picked on the basis of
their relationship with Ray
Bates.
The real purpose of
Lindzen’s talk appears to
have been to provide ammu-
nition for the opening salvo
in a new war on climate sci-
ence, with Matt Dempsey
and the Journal willing
accomplices in the endeav
-
our. Dempsey duly wrote up
an entirely uncritical account of Lindzen’s junk science
and ran it in his column. His understudy Justin McCarthy
rushed in the editorial column to support and endorse
the long-discredited denier talking-points that Dempsey
had rehashed from the ICSF talk.
Dempsey shipped a fair amount of flak for his troubles,
including a very uncomfortable interview with RTÉ’s
Philip Boucher Hayes, who wondered why Dempsey
would rush to print statements when he appeared to
have no idea whether they were true or false. NUI May-
nooth climatologist, Professor John Sweeney, also
trashed Lindzen’s presentation as “balderdash”.
Rather than backing down, the Journal instead dou-
bled down, first offering Bates a page to support
Dempsey (Sweeney was also given the right of reply, but
his solitary piece amid a blizzard of contrarian coverage,
has been the sum of the Journal’s openness to the views
of 97% of practising climatologists).
The Journal then went gangbusters, and ran a news
item from the ICSF’s second meeting, this time quoting
guest speaker William Happer, long-retired professor,
Trump supporter and noted (and, frankly, somewhat
unhinged) climate denier. The Journal comically head-
lined the piece: ‘Earth is in the midst of a CO2 famine
– Princeton professor’, and reported Happer’s long-
debunked spiel as though it was something other than
crude propaganda.
The Journal’s entirely new-found interest in the sci-
ence of climate change did not end there. In the same
edition, it carried a spread over two pages from a father-
and-son duo called Michael and Ronan Connolly,
self-styled “independent scientists and environmental-
ists”. In case you’ve never heard of them, that’s because
nobody else has either. They are involved with Bates in
the ICSF and run an odd little website called ‘Global
Warming Solved’. They also labour under the curious
impression that they have out-thought the entire global
scientific community.
Here’s an example from their FAQ section: “There have
been many peer reviewed studies which have claimed
that man-made global warming is both real and danger-
ous. Our findings show that both claims are wrong”.
Simple as that. And what about CO2?: “the models were
wrong. CO2 doesn’t cause global warming.” Were the
Connollys, self-described polymaths, actually able to
prove either of these claims, they would by now be Ire-
land’s newest Nobel laureates.
The Connollys generously describe the entire interna
-
tional scientific community (NASA, NOAA, the UK Royal
Society, the IPCC and hundreds more international sci
-
entific bodies and institutions) as more likely misguided
than corrupt: “We are optimistic that when our new find-
ings are considered by the scientific community, most
open-minded scientists will agree with us that man-
made global warming theory was flawed”. Indeed.
Before commissioning the Connollys to carry out a
take-down on an actual climatologist, the internationally
respected Professor John Sweeney, Journal editor Justin
McCathy could have spent 10 minutes acquainting him
-
self with the Walter Mitty credentials of his authors. But
then again whatever the Journal is engaged in here, it is
assuredly not journalism.
Four pages on in the same issue, under the heading
‘Agriculture the climate change scapegoat’ a tillage
farmer is given space to air his flat rejection of climate
science. “The fact that the Earth’s temperature is rising
for the past 150 years is irrelevant”, Gerald Potterton
explains. As if that wasn’t convincing enough, yet
another full-page article in the same issue screamed:
‘Climate proposals to cost Ireland €1bn’.
The one dissenting voice in this contrarian chorus is
dairy farmer and former IFA environment chair, Harold
Kingston. While like many in the IFA, he enjoys baiting
‘greens’, he is assuredly no fool; he is probably the best
informed contributor on climate issues in the entire
organisation. Kingston ventured that he was “very dis-
appointed with Matt Dempsey’s article and the editorial
comment about Richard Lindzen’s recent speech in
Dublin…Lindzen’s science has been questioned and
proved wrong”. “To have it put out in the context of Irish
agricultural emissions as an area worth exploring does
no favours to Irish agriculture”.
You might by now be admiring the bravery of the Jour
-
nal in printing such a seditious view of the nonsense
being peddled by its eminence grise; however, King
-
ston’s well argued article never made it into the print
edition and is instead buried behind an online paywall.
The trust any publication enjoys is hard earned and
easily lost. The Irish Farmers Journal is now engaged in
a reckless gamble with a reputation built up over seven
decades. It is choosing to present and promote blatant
propaganda and fake news, rather than informing read
-
ers of the real and imminent threats climate change
poses, both to farming and to their personal safety. The
truth, in time, will out.
John Gibbons is an environmental writer and commen-
tator and tweets @think_or_swim
The IFA’s better
informed Kingston’s
well argued article
never made it into the
print edition and is
instead buried behind
an online paywall
