There's an interesting piece by Ian Katz in the Guardian today. His approach to the current state of global warming is to declare that every rock has to be lifted before any progress can be made. This doesn't seem unreasonable.
He has also started to think about where we go from here, and wonders about the possibility of removing the IPCC from the control of governments and having it run by national academies.
Next, the credibility of the IPCC – or some form of scientific high court – must be restored. In the short term that means appointing independent experts to review any alleged errors in the panel's reports. At the same time the IPCC should renounce, or at least severely restrict the use of, grey literature. "If that means you can't be comprehensive then don't be," says a senior scientist advocating this course. There is a strong case for more radical reforms: the panel should arguably be replaced by a body controlled by national scientific academies rather than governments.
The problem with this is that the national academies are wholly (or nearly wholly) owned subsidiaries of governments, even the nominally independent ones like the Royal Society. Those of us who are suspicious of the IPCC are hardly going to be convinced by a body run by the likes of the Royal Society's climate head honcho, ex-IPCC man Sir John Houghton, or the NAS's Ralph Ciccerone, he of the Hockey Stick panel shenanigans.