Thus, it could be expected that increased supplies of fuelwood, a renewable source of energy, might bring benefits from climate change to some areas, as well as result in costs where production rates are reduced. This is one aspect of the costs and benefits of the mitigation vs. adaptation dilemma of climate change. This issue has been addressed from the very beginning of the climate change debate and was addressed formally by IPCC Working Group III in 1989. However, there have been few attempts to put dollar figures on different possibilities. Inevitably, the mitigation vs. adaptation dilemma will have to be brought to the fore and tackled head-on.
Uncertainty abounds in such enquiry.
There are the acknowledged uncertainties in the response of climate to increased levels of greenhouse gases. Regional differences cannot be predicted with any great certainty. Further, the effects of responses to changes that might occur are not well-known at the quantifiable level and hence the costs and benefits of different actions are difficult to estimate. General estimates have been made of the costs of damage on a global scale that might be caused by a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration. This overall result, however, is characterised by regional and sectoral variations.