Ship of the Dumbed

Stupidest idea ever:

It looks like something out of a Dan Dare comic book, and it might just help to save the world. A scientist at the University of Edinburgh has devised a new weapon in the fight against global warming: a fleet of 1,500 unmanned sailing ships creating wakes that whiten clouds to reflect the heat of the Sun better.

The concept involves vessels powered by a radical rotary-sail technology that could patrol selected areas of ocean, spraying tiny droplets of seawater into existing clouds. The droplets increase the surface area and so whiten the cloud, bouncing more radiation back into space and offsetting the warming caused by burning fossil fuels.

"The beauty of the system is that it runs on wind and seawater..."

...and unicorn kisses and pixie dust...

"Traditional sailing ships have evolved to be sailed by humans. It's much easier to sail a Flettner system. All you need to do is steer and adjust the rotor speed. Reverse the spin and you go backwards."

Accepting for a moment that there is a need for this idiocy, (which I most certainly do not accept), who is going to maintain the vessels? The ocean is the most hostile environment for machinery short of the vacuum of space. Your computerized idiot-savant vessels would last exactly a week on the open ocean with no crew to perform routine maintenance and adjust for unexpected sea-state changes.

Just when I think the honking drones who inhabit wackademia-land can't come up anything dumber, they surprise me all over again.