For attendees who have been to the climate change talks in Copenhagen in December 2009 and are currently attending the Cancun talks, there are some very noticeable differences.

To start it off, there’s less of nearly everything this year, and not just the scaled back conference expectations. There are no huge queues at the entrance. It is a very smooth step that takes less than a minute to enter. The exhibition halls are a lot less noisy than last year. There are no large events held in the corridors (at least so far). Even the number of attendees seems to be less than last year – however this may be a result of the vast conference avenues used.

Additionally, there has been a smooth opening of the conference yesterday, a far call from the infamous climategate events from last year.

In contrast, there is actually more science this year. While the Copenhagen conference was knee deep in activism, often shadowing the science. This year the science is better featured. The IPCC 5th Assessment Report (AR5) is now set to come out in late 2013 and some of its interesting aspects are starting to take form.

Finally, the meeting is expected to have less heads of states coming in for the second, high-profile week. While Copenhagen was the biggest gathering ever of state heads, this year it will probably be mainly environment ministers and government personnel.

But the lowered expectations remain the most glaring issue of this year’s climate change summit in Cancun.

Here’s hoping that the end results of COP16 will follow the pattern of science, rather than everything else, and be bigger than what we got in Copenhagen.