One Damned Scientist v. A Robust Discipline
Scientists are like everybody else. They love their own results. Sexy science gets funding, approval, attention.
But---Scientific work is conducted in a community. If some scientist gets a Eureka!, he writes a paper. Other scientists try to duplicate his results. If they can, or if they cannot, they write a paper about That. Thus there is a lively confirmation process, or, a huge argument.
If you are competitive for grants, (and you must be), there is a temptation to fudge data. Against this temptation, there is a huge reputational risk. If you screw around, it will come out--your lab has lab assistants, equally ambitious or idealistic grad students (from all over the world, and all smart), colleagues dropping by, and a bunch of people reading your papers. Fudge, and your reputation is toast. Good luck, you jerk.
Big-ticket science grants are reviewed by other science foundations--multiple governments, foundations, and organizations. This is sometimes a grant review. This more formal process is exhaustive. These foundations, etc. also have reputational risk. So the majority tendency is honest results.
Thermodynamics
There is a law of thermodynamics that says moving objects tend to keep moving. Things sitting on their ass tend to stay there. Therefore, a number of books, pamphlets, reports, and foundations will look like they are not refining their stance, long after they have begun their own review process.
A lot of people seeking funds (such as environmental groups) will also have to stand pat on their old rhetoric until the revisions of data come in. They have to wait for some confirming or correcting data.
A lot of people seeking funds (such as non-environmental groups) can start their editorials NOW. They only have to add one sentence to what they've already said.
Neither side is done reviewing the science. We know some of the most partisan won't review the science either, on either side. So we will have to listen carefully for the academy's quiet reviewing voice.
Conspiracy Theories
The U.S. Press
The U.S. press is not covering this well now. They weren't actually covering it very well before, either. They had lots of material but no understanding. Now they don't know what to do. Their scientific illiteracy is really what is exposed here--much more important than their partisanship.
This issue has always been full of coalitions. That does not make them conspiracies. It does make them special interest groups.
Pro-business states
Countries that have never had industry want it. The cost of anti-pollution devices creates a barrier to entry into a market economy. They stay doomed to subsistence agriculture. They starve and maybe get handouts. Barriers to entry make it harder to achieve self-help.
Defenders of the downtrodden
These countries are the same ones with cheap labor. A lot of large manufacturers would prefer to keep everything cheap, and make smutty, silty, polluting factories far away from home. A diseased populace also cannot help themselves.
World government sneaks
Many people are against 'world government', but they don't know what form that has taken, so it means little. It's market-driven. Many industries prefer to have international standards, so that
a. they confront similar facilities and methods across the world (think air traffic control, for instance, or airplane repair) and
b. their insurers continue to insure them.
There is an International Standards Organization already. It does a lot of good for companies, cuts their costs over time (but not immediately) and creates worker and public safety. If there is a conspiracy, it is the conspiracy of international insurance and standard practices. And that's pro-business but anti-risk. Not a bad set of conspirators.
For the conspiracies of the UN, think tanks, the liberal left and the conservative right, etc, see thermodynamics above.
Last of all: three thoughts:
It can't be wrong to be clean. If not for climate, then for public health. How clean, it would be nice to know.
One crazy editorial I read had one very good point. What the Earth does is separate from what we believe. It doesn't matter what we prefer. It only matters what's true. Whatever that is.
Forecasting correctly is a great help to business and the economy. (For instance, do you want your ship running into a hurricane?) So we want to know what's true. Not what's exciting. Not what's expedient.
Answer to the title question: Nobody yet. They're working on it.
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