The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has produced a series of assessments of the science of climate change, in 1990, 1995, 2001 and 2007.
The parts of the 2007 Assessent are:
Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis.
Working Group II: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.
Working Group III: Mitigation of Climate Change
The reports are 1000 pages or more each. Each report has a summary for policy makers. these summaries are subject to line-by-line approval by the government delgates who make up the panel. For this reason the summaries have been critcised from both sides: those who claim that the dangers are being exagerated and those who claim that the dangers are being understated. This balance of criticism suggests that the IPCC process are being reasonably effective in countering politicised interference. However, a good way to avoid the issue is to look at the technical summaries in each report. These are written directly by the scientists involved and are not subject to the same line-by-line approval process.
One thing to remember is that the IPCC criterion is "well-established science". Conseqently, dangers where the science is uncertain are flagged as caveats rather than being formally assessed. In particular, the IPCC projection about sea-level rise: 18 to 59 cm by 2100, depending on future emissions. This range is subject to the caveat about ice-sheet flow: "larger values cannot be excluded, but understanding of these effects is too limited to assess their likelihood or provide a best estimate of an upper bound for sea level rise".
The 2001 and 2007 reports can be downloaded from the IPCC website: http://www.ipcc.ch/
Ian Enting: last change 12/6/07.