242 



Now if you'd be so kind as to show the next view graph, please. 

 The next view graph, I'm sorry it doesn't show a httle better. The 

 yellow glowing region is that region of the Arctic within the mete- 

 orological feature called the Arctic front. This feature becomes se- 

 verely polluted during the winter and late spring. And although the 

 view graph doesn't show too well, you can see that this system ex- 

 tends over the Eurasian continent, in the middle of it, and it ex- 

 tends down over Canada and North America. This meteorological 

 continent, if you will, is the size of Africa and becomes filled with 

 rather strong, surprisingly strong, air pollution, air pollution that 

 rivals that found in many large cities. 



Now you can imagine perhaps if even a relatively minor atmos- 

 pheric injection of radioactive debris were to be released in central 

 Eurasia, for example, for that matter in northeast Canada, that 

 this entire air mass could become polluted, affecting the peoples 

 that are living in this air mass. 



And I have one final view graph, please. This view graph is 

 showing a pathway. About the only thing that can really be seen 

 clearly is the yellow glowing arrow. This pathway passes around 

 great meteorological fluid flows in the atmospheric system and is 

 the most common form of pathway that extends from the, let us for 

 tactful state, say Eurasia to the North American Arctic. Our mon- 

 itoring efforts — I think we can have the lights back to normal, 

 please. Our monitoring efforts at the University of Alaska and 

 other people's as well have shown that the pollution episodes that 

 I've must spoken of are truly global in extent; they occur every 

 year; they're of more than academic interest; the^re of more than 

 academic interest, particularly because when dsmgerous compounds 

 are injected into this affected air mass, they can affect very large 

 areas. 



In concluding my remarks, I would like to point out several 

 things in making some recommendations. First, I would like to re- 

 mind that this is not a problem in meteorology or oceanography or 

 sociology or economics. It's a problem in all of these. This phenome- 

 non is the legacy of the cold war. It's a legacy that we have to pass 

 on to our children and perhaps it's the saddest legacy of all. My 

 intuition is that the cleanup costs, both in health and monetary 

 terms, to set the situation right, will be in the hundreds of billions 

 of dollars eventually, if I had to make a guess. I would urge you. 

 Senator and the Committee, I would urge that we don't 

 parochialize the process and we don't fibulize it. That we don't 

 imagine that there's one country or one agency, one university, one 

 institute that can handle this problem. I would urge you to start 

 adopting broad thinking. I think we need leadership from the sci- 

 entific community, and in thinking how one might establish leader- 

 ship like that, I'm wondering if perhaps we might consider imple- 

 menting something like an overseeing agency of universities sur- 

 rounding the polar regions. Something in the nature of the Univer- 

 sity Corporation for Atmospheric Research. Well, you could have 

 the best part of corporate flexibility and the best part of intellec- 

 tual insight brought to bear on this subject so that we can do it 

 expeditiously and so that we can do it with as little cost and pain 

 as possible. 



