Phys.org sounds the alarm: Meteorologists targeted in climate misinfo surge.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Once trusted faces on the news, meteorologists now brave threats, insults and slander online from conspiracy theorists and climate change deniers who accuse them of faking or even fixing the weather.

Users on Twitter and other social media falsely accused Spain’s weather agency of engineering a drought, Australia’s of doctoring its thermometers and France’s of exaggerating global warming through misplaced weather stations.

“The coronavirus is no longer a trend. Conspiracy theorists and deniers who used to talk about that are now spreading disinformation about climate change,” Alexandre Lopez-Borrull, lecturer in Information and Communication Sciences at the Open University of Catalonia, told AFP.

“These scientific bodies are seen as part of the establishment, so anything they say may get disputed on social networks.

“They are providing evidence against what the climate deniers claim, so the latter try to discredit them.”

Australian thermometers

In a case investigated by AFP Fact Check, conservative media and Facebook users shared unfounded claims that Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) doctored its temperature readings.

In an analysis of data obtained via a freedom of information request, prominent climate skeptic Jennifer Marohasy said BOM’s electronic probes returned readings up to 0.7 degrees Celsius warmer than those of its older mercury thermometers.

Experts who analyzed the data said the claims were inaccurate.

Monash University emeritus environment professor Neville Nicholls said the difference between most readings on the electronic probes and the mercury thermometers was negligible—between zero and 0.1C (0.18 degrees Fahrenheit).

The World Meteorological Organization told AFP that the BOM’s measurements were in line with its standards, contrary to Marohasy’s allegation.

Marohasy makes her case in video below.

Several examples in the article shows they are relying on fact checking by AFP (Agence France Presse).  So the AFP Fact Check follows the usual procedure:  get quotes from establishment supporters in order to isolate and cancel a finding contrary to “consensus” climate science.

More from AFP to See How the Enforcement Works

Climate ‘declaration’ recirculates debunked claims.Excerpt in italics with my bolds

First Attack:   Big Oil Funds Them, So They Lie

However seven of the signatories to the declaration were identified on the list as having worked for Shell and eight others as having worked in the oil industry. Crok confirmed to AFP that Berkhout himself worked for the firm “about 40 years ago.” Besides these, there were 13 petroleum engineers and petroleum geologists, plus several mining specialists.

Several signatories had links, either mentioned on the list or documented elsewhere, to US climate-skeptic free-market groups with ties to the oil industry: the Heartland Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute.

These groups each received money from oil giant ExxonMobil, according to donor and tax documents published by Greenpeace (here, here and here). The company has been accused of undermining science to protect its fossil fuel business — a charge it denies.

Second Attack:  Only Some Signatories are Climatologists

According to an AFP count of the declaration’s signatories, about 10 explicitly described themselves as climatologists or climate scientists, fewer than one percent of the total. A few others described themselves as specialists in paleoclimatology and atmospheric sciences.

There were approximately 40 geophysicists, 130 geologists and 200 engineers of various kinds, plus several mathematicians, medical doctors and agricultural scientists.

Thirdly:  IPCC is the Final Authority

Documents accrediting the mainstream scientific view on climate change are more comprehensive than the World Climate Declaration. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change invited 721 experts from 90 countries to be authors and editors of its three-part Sixth Assessment Report, released between August 2021 and April 2022.

The report constitutes the most comprehensive assessment of scientific knowledge on climate change. Each part was some 3,000 pages long. The authors reviewed hundreds of studies that were listed in the reference sections. It says there is “unequivocal” evidence that humans are warming the climate by burning fossil fuels.

Finally, Refer to Insider Supporters to Refute Claims

Examples in the AFP fact check include Carbon Brief and World Weather Attribution.

Why Should We Believe A Bunch of Journalists like AFP?

Well, because they pass the media bias test;

Who is behind Media Bias Fact Checks and what is their POV?

From Climate Change Dispatch ‘Media Bias/Fact Check’ Site Served With Cease And Desist, Gets Fact-Checked.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Today, PSI has issued Media Bias/Fact Check (MBFC) site owner, Dave Van Zandt with a pre-action legal notice to take down the defamatory and false smear.

Ironically, the self-styled ‘MEDIA BIAS/FACT CHECK‘ (MB/FC) which negatively fact-checked PSI admits it relies on the subjective bias to decide how biased others are. In other words, MB/FC is a pseudoscientific fact checker!

Apart from unlawfully smearing PSI, Mr. Van Zandt has smeared other websites that publish scientific articles critical of man-made global warming claims. Among the unfairly smeared are:

• Climate Change Dispatch
• CFACT
• WUWT

Below we help readers to fact-check the pseudo-fact-checker. We put Dave Van Zandt the faceless fact-checker under the microscope and discovered the following:

♦  Van Zandt Cites No Scientific Qualifications At All
♦  Van Zandt Was Exposed By WND As A Fraud And A Liar
♦  Van Zandt’s Website (MBFC) Does Not Apply Any Objective Scientific Method
♦  MBFC Relies On Unverifiable Subjectivity (Own Bias) To Make Judgments

Climate Enforcers Appeal to Membership in IFCN

Both AFP and MBFC stake their credibility on belonging to the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN).  Who’s behind that authority?  WND discussed them in their article The 9 fakest fake-news checkers.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

In the past Facebook announced it would use the International Fact-Checking Network, or IFCN, to check on the legitimacy of news articles posted to the social media site.

IFCN is hosted by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and funded, in part, by Google and foundations of leftist billionaires George Soros and Bill Gates. Soros donated $25 million to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The Daily Mail reported that Clinton super-donor and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar is also backing the project.

The website reveals: “Poynter’s IFCN has received funding from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, the Duke Reporters’ Lab, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Omidyar Network, the Open Society Foundations and the Park Foundation.”

Summary:  

There’s a well-funded industry dedicated to curating the news for the sake of “right-thinking” public opinion. It’s a closed loop of self-appointed authorities who validate each other, and excommunicate unbelievers.  Woe to those who outsource their critical intelligence to such.