Because the warmists lack the crucial evidence, and cannot win in fair debate.
In this article in the Australian newspaper David wrote “I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia’s compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.” It was known within the Canberra environmental bureacuracy at the time that some “rocket scientist” had written a ground-breaking carbon accounting system, and that was this an important piece of IP for the Australian Government — David was identifiying himself as that person. Ever since, a main counter-response to David’s critiques of the carbon dioxide theory is that he claimed to be a rocket scientist but isn’t (example), rather than to argue with the data or the logic.
“Rocket scientist” is or was a widely used colloquial term in the US to mean anyone capable of doing rocket science, and applies to most hard technical PhDs at the handful of top institutions (and David certainly qualified). As it happens, after Stanford David interviewed at JPL (NASA) in Pasadena, but decided on a Silicon Valley job instead.
Naturally, smart people look at the contents and the message, not the biography of who says it. The latter ends in authoritarianism and corruption, is profoundly unscientific, and goes against the Enlightenment (see this introduction).
Did you know some climate activists keep attack sites with smears on scientists, to be used by their minions whenever a critic appears in public? The leading one is DeSmogBlog, associated with David Suzuki. David and Joanne are proud to be on DeSmog; what skeptic wouldn’t be?
Apparently there are people who think this sort of behavior is ok.
Our climate work is funded out of family savings and donations by readers of Joanne’s blog.
There are no conflicts of interest to declare. We have no investments in fossil fuels, shorts on renewables, or any investments in the energy sector -- except for our interest in the Cool Futures Hedge Fund, which is opening in 2017. There are no government grants or salaries to declare. (Unlike many supporters of the carbon dioxide theory we are not funded by its prime beneficiary, Big-Government.) We have received modest donations, occasional speaking fees, and fees for writing articles, but no other income from climate activities.
Ironically, the savings that made our work possible came from modeling income earned from the Australian Greenhouse Office and the Department of Climate Change.
We are accused of being variously funded by Big-Oil, Big-Energy, Gina Rinehart, Ron Manners, the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (AMEC), or the Galileo Movement. We have never received any money from any of these sources.
If the people who accuse us of these things are so careless with the truth and are prepared to make things up, what else are they making up?
If the politically-correct mob were also scientifically correct, they wouldn't need to call their critics names.
Usually it starts with variations on “stupid” and “crazy”, but eventually all roads lead to “racist”.
Global warming is one of their most important projects. (The Greens in particular have invested very heavily in the idea. Where would the Greens be if it turned out global warming was mainly caused by the Sun?) It's a badge of honor that we’ve been called all sorts of stuff including, bizarrely, anti-Semitic.
Sometimes publishers are misled into apparently believing these unsubstantiated wild allegations and other lies about us. One, AIMN graciously apologized after such an incident, which contained a spectacular range of smears.