Have to disagree. The finance/economics comparison is quite apt. There are reams of data and high quality dispassionate financial analysis online. The climate stuff is nothing but press releases.
The data is NOT readily available. The papers cited in the press releases are not online for free. And even if they were, they're obfuscated such that anyone with a life needs some second hand analysis to form an understanding. You really don't see that sort of analysis.
"Hard copies of the Summaries for Policymakers, Technical Summaries, Synthesis Reports and Technical Papers in English and in other UN languages, and CD-ROMs of the full reports, can be obtained FREE OF CHARGE from the IPCC Secretariat."
As for your second point -- that the reports are hard to understand -- then with all due respect, I would suggest that if you can't understand the reports, you aren't qualified to have a dissenting opinion on the matter.
Ok, I'll go download one of these here technical papers. "Implications of Proposed CO2 Limitations." Let's jump down to pg23, picked at random. Here we have a multi page discussion of models that are NOT published anywhere for free. You have to go buy them as far as I can tell.
This was my whole point. These IPCC papers are huge collections of commentary with footnotes, not actual research.
> that the reports are hard to understand
The reports are not hard to understand at face value. They are hard to meaningfully understand. A statement of cash flows for most corporations can be basically explained in ten minutes. It doesn't mean anything without analysis, however. You need industry context and commentary along with it. If you just read a company's annual report and look at the page with the statement of cash flows on it you're not going to know shit. These IPCC papers are VERY MUCH like glossy annual public company reports, even aesthetically. They are nothing like the writing that leads to real understanding of economics or the finances of individual companies.
BTW: Why would anyone take an organization with "intergovernmental" in its name seriously? Treating government releases as your first source in any other field is a pretty surefire way to fail.
The data is NOT readily available. The papers cited in the press releases are not online for free. And even if they were, they're obfuscated such that anyone with a life needs some second hand analysis to form an understanding. You really don't see that sort of analysis.