A meeting of 2,000 scientists from 80 countries met in Copenhagen in March, to prepare an update report of the latest climate change information, under the auspices of the International Scientific Conference on Climate Change (ISCCC). A report from the meeting will be presented to delegates of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which meets in December in Copenhagen, and where it is hoped that a successor to the Kyoto Protocol will be agreed.

An ISCCC spokesperson said that while its report was unofficial, and the starting point for the UNFCCC meeting will be the 2007 IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) report, the ISCCC’s report would provide “a scientific update of the 2007 assessment of global warming made by IPCC, taking into account the latest research”.

Major areas for discussion at the March meeting were ocean acidification, rises in sea level and warming-related rainforest destruction. Ocean acidification has potentially serious effects for marine ecosystems. Research presented at the meeting also suggested that “there is still a significant chance” that global average temperatures could rise by more than 2ºC, even if CO₂ emissions were to peak in 2015 and decrease at the rate of 3% per year thereafter.

Following talks in Bonn in April, the UNFCCC noted that industrialized countries were still far from making commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25-40% of 1990 levels over the next decade. This is the cut needed to curb climate change according to the IPCC. The EU has committed to cutting emissions by 30% provided there is an “acceptable” agreement in Copenhagen in December, but similar pledges have so far not been forthcoming from other major economies.

-- This article was published in The Oils and Fats International, Biofuels Issue, June 2009, Vol 25, No. 5.