Alan - I doubt there's any real disagreement here, but just a
clarification; climate variability/noise is irrelevant to the question
of whether some form of SRM can be tested, but of course critical to
the question of how long it would take to detect a signal.  If the
goal is to estimate changes on a global scale, that will take decades
and significant forcing levels (we have a paper under review on this
subject that puts numbers on that trade-off).  Other than the moral
hazard, I see no basic difference between testing this, and any other
experiment in any other field of engineering or science.  Clearly with
one Earth, I agree with learning everything we can with computer
testing first, but if we ever did want to do this in full-scale, I'd
rather start small and learn something rather than just turning it on
and hoping for the best.

doug

On Sep 27, 11:44 am, Alan Robock <[email protected]> wrote:
>   Dear Ken,
>
> I think you are being rather picky with words.  In any case, I never
> said it cannot be tested.  I said it cannot be fully tested in a
> real-world in situ experiment without full-scale implementation, because
> the climate signal will be drowned out by chaotic climate variations and
> because injecting into a pristine stratosphere cannot test injecting
> into an existing cloud.  Of course computers can be used for testing.  
> That is what I do, and I advocate much more of it.  The statement below
> refers to in situ experimentation.
>
> Alan
>
> Alan Robock, Professor II (Distinguished Professor)
>    Editor, Reviews of Geophysics
>    Director, Meteorology Undergraduate Program
> Department of Environmental Sciences        Phone: +1-732-932-9800 x6222
> Rutgers University                                  Fax: +1-732-932-8644
> 14 College Farm Road                   E-mail: [email protected]
> New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551  USA      http://envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock
>

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