DISCUSSION 
suggestion to look for areas which are specifi- 
cally favored for the study of key problems of 
cloud physics or cloud modification. One is the 
Olympic Mountains near Seattle, Washington, 
for a study of orographic rain. These mountains 
have characteristics of a tropical rainforest on 
their windward side and desert-like stretches on 
the downwind side. Another is the downwind 
shore of the Great Lakes where studies on winter 
snow showers could be made. They are due to 
continental polar-air outbreaks across Canada at 
a time when the Lakes are still unfrozen. The un- 
stable dry cold air eagerly takes up water vapor 
from the warm lakes which is readily being 
dumped on a 20-mile deep strip along the down- 
wind shores. The Great Lakes region invites 
another study: large-scale seeding of super- 
cooled cloud layers. The region produces very 
persistent Stratus cloud decks during the winter, 
which can be dissipated through dry-ice seeding. 
A study appears feasible of the influence of 
large-scale seeding (areas of 1000 sq mi or more) 
on weather. This would have to be a cooperative 
project with the Air Force furnishing ‘flying 
boxears’ loaded with dry ice and the US. 
Weather Bureau and other institutions in the 
area making measurements of meteorological 
parameters in the air and on the ground, such 
as, for instance, the variation of net radiation 
flux, albedo, and of the local windfield before 
and after seeding. 
Dr. B. J. Mason—It would be presumptuous 
for me to make comments on some aspects of 
Captain Orville’s paper, but nevertheless I 
would like to express what I feel very strongly 
about research in this field and the programs. 
There are three outstanding thoughts in this 
talk—continuity, stability, and building research 
around the promising individual. One of the 
greatest problems we have to face in this field of 
cloud physics is the shortage of competent peo- 
ple. There are many more projects than there 
are good people, and there are certainly many 
more problems than there are people competent 
to talk about them. We have spread the avail- 
able talent far too thinly. This means we must 
387 
do everything we can to make the maximum use 
of the people we have available and to recruit 
people from other physical sciences. This brings 
me to underline my view on how important con- 
tinuity and stability are, so you can build up a 
team around a promising individual, and he can 
be sure he has funds for the work over a period 
of years. In my view one can do very much more 
research if one has ten million dollars over ten 
years, rather than ten million dollars in one 
year. There are no problems worth tackling in 
this field that ean be solved by a crash program 
in one year. The trivial problems we are not in- 
terested in anyway. It is this continuity and sta- 
bility that is so important, and I believe that 
one does not solve problems by building grandi- 
ose institutions in the first place, and finding 
staff afterwards. You have to build the institu- 
tion around the staff. It is the people that mat- 
ter and this means, of course, one must plan very 
carefully. In the long term, it is better to do five 
things properly than to make a half-hearted job 
of fifty things. 
Dr. Douglas K. Lilly—It appears to me that 
for the most part we are trying to modify the 
weather after it was largely already quite settled 
and in order to modify a large convective sys- 
tem or something of this kind energies are re- 
quired of any astronomical figure you want to 
take arbitrarily. I know, however, that in chemi- 
cal reactions we have very often a situation in 
which it is necessary for a system to acquire a 
certain level of energy before it can do some- 
thing. At this level it can possibly do several 
different things the results of which may be quite 
different. But at exactly this peak, the activation 
peak, it takes really very little additional en- 
ergy to push it in one direction or another, or in 
fact, back where it came from. I would like to 
suggest the possible place to look for a modifi- 
cation is way back at the beginning when a cy- 
clone has not even started. There must be a 
point of indecision in the system at which a very 
small push in just the right direction could be 
perfectly enormous in its final effect, and this is 
something we looked at very little. 
