Now Professor Stephen Salter, emeritus professor of Engineering Design at Edinburgh University, believes he can manufacture clouds that could help save the planet from global warming.

Salter, who invented one of the first devices to turn wave power into electricity, claims that the highly reflective clouds could be used to bounce more of the sun’s rays back into space — counteracting rising temperatures caused by a build-up of greenhouse gasses in the Earth’s atmosphere.

His technique, which is being examined by the environment department, involves using a fine mist of sea spray to increase the density, and whiteness, of low-lying stratocumulus.

Salter, whose research will be published in Atmospheric Research, claims that by increasing the reflectivity of a third of clouds by 4% he could offset global warming.

Salter’s heat shield would be created by a flotilla of hundreds of unmanned boats positioned off the west coast of Africa and in the Pacific, west of Peru, where the lumpy, white clouds are most prevalent.

The forward movement of the boats — driven by wind-powered rotors — would turn underwater turbines attached to their hulls. These turbines would generate enough electricity to create an electrostatic field inside the rotors. Water sucked into the rotors would hit the electrostatic field, creating a very fine mist of sea water.

As the sea-spray evaporates, tiny particles of salt would be carried into the low-lying clouds by rising currents of air. These particles would create more water droplets, increasing the clouds’ density and making them more reflective.

Across the globe, 40,000 tons of sea spray is whipped up into the atmosphere each second naturally. Salter believes that an additional half a ton per second would have to be generated to brighten clouds by the necessary 4%.

Initially, 500 radio-controlled boats, costing £1m each, would be deployed. The 70ft-tall vessels, which would be placed 25 miles apart, would be tracked by satellite. According to Salter’s calculations, an additional 500 boats would have to set sail each year to counteract rising levels of CO2.

Although his idea may appear futuristic, Salter, who collaborated with Dr John Latham of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, is convinced that a pilot project could be up and running within four years. He believes firms could be persuaded to off-set their carbon emissions by paying him £10 per ton to prevent a corresponding amount of heat from entering the atmosphere.

While the academic admits the heat shield is not a solution to global warming, he believes the technique could act as a stop-gap until CO2 emissions are brought under control.

Temperatures worldwide have risen 0.6C over the past century and are expected to accelerate over the next one.

“I put everything I have into renewable energy but I don’t believe it is going to be enough,” said Salter. “People have signed up to Kyoto but CO2 still continues to increase at a faster rate so however much you do in the way of renewable energy or carbon sequestration there is going to be a huge gap left — it is essential that we control this as soon as possible.

Pre-empting accusations that his project might be seen as fanciful, he added: “Can you think of anything that did not appear complex before it started? The car must have seen complex to those used to the horse and cart.”

The government is aware of Professor Slater’s ideas and we are currently considering them,” said a spokesman for the department of environment, food and rural affairs.

Sir David King, the governments chief scientific adviser, added: “The problem of global warming is sufficiently important and has such consequences for us all that we cannnot really reject any of these out-of-the-box ideas. Invesitigating the assistance of the generation of cloud cover has to be investigated.”

In Russia, manipulating the clouds has been refined to an art. The air force is used regularly to drop chemical dispersal agents into clouds, to ensure fine weather on important occasions. The technique, which was used during the 1980 Moscow Olympics, was deployed again in May for the Victory Day celebrations to ensure that visiting dignitaries did not get wet. Last spring organisers of an open air concert of Sir Paul McCartney’s in St Petersburg ensured sunny weather by seeding the clouds with plane-loads of dry ice.

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