Schaefer credited this publication with his introduction to many prominent individuals in the Schenectady area, including Dr. Willis Rodney Whitney of the General Electric Research Laboratory.
During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Schaefer built up his personal library on natural history, science, and his other areas of interest and read a great deal.
During this period Schaefer also created adult education programs on natural history topics which gave him opportunities to speak in the community.
Through these many activities Schaefer continued to expand his acquaintances, including John S. Apperson, an engineer at General Electric and a devout conservationist of the Adirondacks.
Apperson introduced Schaefer to Irving Langmuir, a scientist at the GE Research Laboratory who was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1932 for his work in surface chemistry.
In addition to continuing his consulting work, Schaefer was in a position to devote much more of his time to some of his lifelong interests such as environmental issues, natural and local history.
This included the writing of numerous articles and the delivering of many presentations concerning the natural environment of upstate New York and the human impact on it.
During his retirement, Schaefer reflected on his extraordinary life preparing timelines, an unpublished autobiography, and indexes to some of his research notebooks and film collections.
As part of this project, Schaefer designed and built a 6' diameter window in memory of his parents for the Saint James Church in North Creek in the Adirondacks.
This discovery brought him national publicity in popular magazines and an abundance of correspondence from individuals, including many students, seeking to replicate his procedure.
He had stumbled onto the very principle that was hidden in all previous experiments—the stimulating effect of a sudden change in heat/cold, humidity, in supercooled water spontaneously producing billions of ice nuclei.
In November 1946 Schaefer conducted a successful field test seeding a natural cloud by airplane—with dramatic ice and snow effect.
After leaving Munitalp, Schaefer's career turned towards scientific education, and let him put his belief in the power of experimentation and observation over book-learning into practice.
During the 1970s he organized and led annual winter expeditions for 8-10 research scientists to Yellowstone National Park where massive amounts of supercooled clouds were produced by the many geysers, including Old Faithful.
Temperature and ice crystal formations allowed first-hand observation of the full range of halo and corona optical effects.
During his years at ASRC, in addition to the NSI summer programs, Schaefer led annual research expeditions to Yellowstone National Park for atmospheric scientists to work in the outdoor laboratory it provided each January.
In the 1970s Schaefer's own research interests focused on solar energy, aerosols, gases, air quality, and pollution particles in the atmosphere.