Australia Institute executive director Clive Hamilton told an environmental task force that Australia faced a bleak future, with major population movements because of extreme weather events and the rise of insect-borne diseases.

"I think parts of Australia which are currently inhabited will be uninhabitable," he said at the International Climate Change Taskforce meeting here.

"I think we'll see large scale population movements, I think we'll see people climate-proofing their homes. At least, that's what wealthy people will be able to do.

"I think we'll see rapid increase in some vector-borne diseases, we'll see rural communities devastated by changes in precipitation and increases in warming and the greater frequency of extreme weather events.

"Sometimes as an environmentalist I'm afraid to say these sorts of things, until I read the reports by the scientists who say things even more scary."

The Climate Change Taskforce began meeting here Monday to finalise recommendations on how to move global climate change policy beyond the Kyoto Protocol.

The protocol currently provides obligations through to 2012, and the taskforce's recommendations will be put into a report for worldwide government leaders early next year.

The Australia Institute is one of three international think tanks, including Britain's Institute for Public Policy Research and the US Centre for American Progress, that initiated the taskforce.

New South Wales state Premier and taskforce member Bob Carr today released a report by the government's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Organisation predicting more frequent droughts, heatwaves, rainstorms and strong winds for the state.

Prepared for the NSW Greenhouse Office, the study developed climate change projections due to the enhanced greenhouse effect.

Carr said the report found a worst-case scenario of a 70 percent increase in drought frequency by 2030, and warned living in New South Wales, the most populous eastern state with a moderate climate, could become akin to "living in an oven".

"Global warming has got New South Wales in its grip as much as any other part of the world," he said.

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