Oh man, I haven’t read anything on people changing clouds with their minds in decades!
!!!
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I listened to the whole thing and now look.
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Reminds me of the quirkier powers on Misfits. Like the guy that could control milk with his mind.
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Will there be Bonsai Cloud protests?
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Meanwhile…
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It’s lucky for him that clouds speak English.
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Be careful – I thought so too, when I saw it years ago. But I strangely feel myself compelled to say “cluuuuuuuueeeeed, become a square-shape cluuuuueeeed” from time to time.
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Sphere is 4/3(pi)r3.
Cube within that sphere, where r of sphere is distance from centre to corner to cube, has volume of 1.54r^3 (proof left an as exercise for the reader).
Difference in volume is (4/3(pi) - 1.54)r3 = 2.64r3. So you have to take away 2.64r3 of cloud from a spherical cloud with radius r to make it a cubic cloud.
Density of a cirrus cloud is 0.03 g/m3. (Those look like cirrus in the video, the filmy wispy ones. Cumulus, the puffy fluffy ones, would be as much as ten times heavier.) (Liquid water content - Wikipedia))
Cloud temperature can vary a lot, and if they’re thick then they’re colder on the top than on the bottom (https://mynasadata.larc.nasa.gov/glossary/monthly-cloud-temperature-isccp-2/), but the ones in the video are pretty thin, so let’s assume uniform average temperature. On average, cloud tops are 262K = –11°C. (https://isccp.giss.nasa.gov/climanal1.html).
So to vapourize the outside of a spherical cloud to turn it into a cubical cloud, you need to heat the water from –11°C to its boiling point, which won’t be 100°C because atmospheric pressure isn’t 1 atm. Cirrus clouds are typically at at least 5000 m altitude (Cirrus cloud - Wikipedia), let’s call it 8000 m to pick an intermediate value. Atm pressure about 0.4 atm at 8000 m. It’ll be higher the lower the cloud is. (Atmospheric pressure - Wikipedia), Water boiling temperature is about +71ºC (Water Altitude Boiling Point Calculator) at that height.
So for each gram of water, you have to heat the solid ice from –11°C to 0°C (2.1 J/gºC x 11ºC = 23 J/g), melt the ice (334 J/g), heat the liquid from 0°C to 71°C (4.2 J/gºC x 71ºC = 300 J/g), and then vapourize it (2260 J/g), for a total of 2920 J/g. It’s the vapourization that kills you, but you can’t make the cloud go away without turning the water to gas, because otherwise it’s still condensed and visible.
So that’s (2920 J/g)(0.03 g/m3)(2.64r3) = 230r3 J/m3 to evapourate the sides of sphere and leave a cube.
So a 1 km radius spherical cloud requires 230 GJ of energy to turn it into a cube. If we harnessed the total output of the largest dam in British Columbia (WAC Bennet dam, 2916 MW, or almost two and half times what it takes to send a DeLorean to back in time to 1955), it would take 80 s to produce that much energy.
So obviously a dude can totally produce that with his brain. Seems legit to me!
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Cloud-blusters.
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Orgonite scientists are trying to suppress the knowledge that a spray bottle of vinegar is just as effective.
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I am almost certain that this is the inspiration for the voice of Augustus St. Cloud in The Venture Brothers.
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Obligatory video link:
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Dunno about the cloud, but I now hate jazz and love Richard Nixon.
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And, in that case, he wouldn’t have had to make his voice sound weird.
Occam’s razor.
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Aaaaand now all of my friends are slipping “clewwwwd, become a squeah shape clewwwwd…” into conversations just to drive each other nuts.
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It’s better than that: with modern freeware editing tools you can just video any random clewd changing shape, then add in the appropriate voice-over in post. Hey Presto! 100% success!
Edit: um … what @TobinL said 
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