After decades of research that sought, and found, evidence of a human influence on the earth's climate, climatologists are beginning to shift to a new and similarly daunting enterprise: creating decade-long forecasts for climate, just as meteorologists routinely generate weeklong forecasts for weather.

The European Commission will push members of the Group of Eight industrialized countries to equal the European Union's commitment to fighting global warming when the G8 summit opens in July in the hot-spring resort of Toyako, Hokkaido, a senior EC official said. Joao Vale de Almeida Claiming the EU has set an ambitious goal on climate change, Joao Vale de Almeida, a G8 summit "sherpa," or personal representative of the EC president, said he will call on other members to take their share of responsibility.

The United States' agenda for the upcoming Group of Eight summit in Toyako, Hokkaido, emphasizes health and development issues, making sure previous agreements are carried out in a publicly accountable way and guaranteeing that developing nations are part of a post-Kyoto Protocol treaty, said the top U.S. official coordinating Washington's role at the G8.

European climate change diplomats said on Wednesday they don't expect much from the Bush administration, and figure whoever becomes the next US president will do more to combat global warming. "We acknowledge that we cannot expect much movement on climate change from the current White House," a delegation from the European Parliament said in a statement at the end of a three-day Washington visit.

Rich countries must commit to cutting carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050 and developing nations must agree that by 2020 they too will set their own targets, leading economist Nicholas Stern said on Wednesday. He said the only way the world could defeat the climate crisis was by ensuring that global carbon emissions peaked within 15 years, were then halved from 1990 levels to 20 billion tonnes a year by 2050, and cut to 10 billion thereafter.

The Rudd Government is buying into the flawed plans to alleviate the water crisis. IT IS possible to have life without oil, but life without water is impossible for more than a few days. Given the impending water crisis you would think that, at the very least, the Rudd Government would have looked at all the alternatives before Water Minister Penny Wong announced a $13 billion investment program in "strategic water priorities" in a speech to the Annual Water Summit on Tuesday.