ment. He is not an international operator. He is in a sense a supranational operator. It will take a long time, perhaps, before the political attitude toward supranationalism will catch up. But we have an opportunity to achieve that kind of result by operations over a broad area that do not depend upon the competency or the willingness of underdeveloped countries to take an effective hand in it if we can carry out the necessary operations by some such body, perhaps as a civil service group, within the Organization of American States which can do the job competently and effectively without depending upon the political collaboration of underdeveloped countries which are likely to put roads and social reforms about 10 leagues ahead of anything like meterology. Regarding organizational responsibilities, I agree at most points with the National Science Foundation Special Commission report, but I would like to make more definite suggestions in some places where that report is vague. Numbering them parallel with their NSF numbers, the Special Commission recommends giving support to research and development missions and major but not exclusive planning and implementation missions to any agency of the executive branch.

I suggest this agency be a new and independent Weather Modification Commission.

Second, the Special Commission recommends continuation and expansion of the NSF program primarily through universities and the International Center for Atmospheric Research. I concur, but I suggest wider collaboration with nonuniversity entities having research capabilities, especially intergration with reduction to useful practice. The NSF report recommends mission-oriented activity within the Federal agencies concerned. I concur.

Fourth, the NSF report recommends separation of regulation from research and development to a degree dependent upon the extent of activity and the degree of regulation, the Office of Science and Technology acting as a sort of superregulator to resolve major conflicts. I suggest the situation already justifies a completely undependent regulatory agency.

I further suggest that major conflicts, if they develop, will involve social, industrial, legal, and practical elements to a degree probably overshadowing the scientific and technological, and a single fully regulatory agency would be better than a two-headed one.

The NSF report also states that whatever regulation is decided upon must be national in scope. I do not see how this can be except through Federal preemption of the power to regulate.

Fifth, the NSF report recommends scientific and public policy views through a standing committee of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. I suggest that the public policy aspects of the national weather modification program already extends beyond science and engineering and that an advsory body on publc policy should include major representation of nontechnological interest and concern, a breadth of viewpoint too important not to be spelled out.

I am well aware that proliferation of Government agencies poses a serious problem and that establishment of a new one is not as simple a solution as it might appear, nor something to be taken lightly. Yet I am moved to speak for it. A nonexisting agency obviously lacks a voice of its own. If anyone is to speak for it he must rise from outside the Government or else speak for it against his own agency.

Also, I feel that a voice from outside is necessary to counterbalance the tendency I have noted in some agency statements to overaggrandize their roles somewhat at each other's expense but mostly at the expense of accomplishments outside the Government whose authors have no organized voice.

My suggestion for a new Weather Control Commission rests on the following observations:

First, the initial form in which a national weather modification program is cast will be crucial for its future development and to temporize by allocating it to an agency not fully suited to the task would be to risk its lasting deformation.

Second, the task transcends the boundaries of existing agencies no less than it transcends State boundaries. It corresponds to an entirely novel relationship between Government and the governed. Its lines to the Executive, and especially to the Congress, should be free from the inadvertent influences that would be unavoidable if the function were appended to those of an existing agency.

Third, and in this particular present where our imperfect past meets the future, and in the terms of actualities of top-level leadership, of depth of commitment, breadth of mission, not one of the existing agencies, nor all of them together, in my opinion, can furnish a home that is both congenial and adequate for the people on whom we now have to depend for performance of this task.

With regard to the level of expenditures appropriate to this program, let me say that in the recent past I have been seeing in foreign countries a rather horrible case where a program was built up or blown up, inflated, to meet the level of available funds. As a result, the program is in serious trouble. It does not rest on a true capability. It does not have a good objective and the most serious cost of this is not the waste of money, which is replaceable, but the loss of professional self-respect and the loss of the esteem of our colleagues, both professional and nonprofessional. This esteem is hard-earned capital and we have to reinvest it wisely.

The reason behind this, in my opinion, lies not with overfunding, but with inadequately meeting the challenge in leadership to suit the situation.

Using Federal support wisely to engineer leadership and speed the growth of competence is an immediate task of the highest importance and to my mind is the most urgent reason for deliberate speed in creating a weather modification mission.

Let me say with respect to the testimony of my esteemed predecessor, Dr. McDonald, that I believe that the question is not one of leadership. I think Dr. Langmuir would have said it does not matter how big a match you use, it depends on what you light with the match. Some of the agencies here have been holding some pretty big matches but they have not lit much of a fire with them.

On the other hand, I think the Bureau of Reclamation, with a relatively small match, have a pretty hot fire going.

Finally, of all the Government agencies that have touched this field in the past, the Advisory Committee for Weather Control provided, in relation to its resources, by far the most constructive leadership and the most creative programs. It provided a demonstration that has not been forgotten, of the effectiveness of this approach in organiz

ng the many separate elements, public and private, into a productive

ational program.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator ANDERSON. Thank you very much.

You comment on the use of private entities because manpower is ot available. Is there a pool of manpower in private agencies and he universities which could be used to conduct the program so that hey could participate?

Mr. HOWELL. There is certainly a pool of manpower that can be ised in some parts of this project. Having worked with a number ›f private industrial organizations, I am very much aware that there re sources collateral, let us say, to those of professional meteorology, vhich, by adequate leadership in this science, can be brought into ffective combination with existing nuclei of professional competence nd can serve as seeds for new nuclei.

Senator ANDERSON. Thank you very much. I appreciate your coming.

Our last witness is Mr. Braham.

STATEMENT OF ROSCOE R. BRAHAM, JR., PROFESSOR OF METEOROLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, AND DIRECTOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO CLOUD PHYSICS LABORATORY

Mr. BRAHAM. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, my name is Roscoe R. Braham, Jr. I am a professor of meteorology at the University of Chicago and director of the University of Chicago Cloud Physics Laboratory. It is a privilege for me to have this opportunity to express my views concerning the proposed legislation, S. 2875.

What, by way of experience and background, can I bring to bear on this subject? Since early 1946 my work has been the study of clouds, primarily in field experiments, including cloud modification, as a scientist in Government and at the University of Arizona, the New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology, and at the University of Chicago.

Over the years this work has been supported by many different Government agencies-Weather Bureau, Air Force, Atomic Energy Commission, Public Health Service, National Science Foundation— private foundations and private university funds. At present I serve, or have recently served as a consultant on weather modification research for the U.S. Army, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the U.S. Weather Bureau.

I am pleased to note in S. 2875 the implicit recognition that weather modification, particularly cloud seeding for precipitation changes, are important and worthy of increased attention and support. I heartily endorse the principle that the Department of the Interior should play a key role in the development of precipitation modification technology. I also believe, however, that the proposed legislation is unrealistic in its concentration, within that Department, of authority and responsibility for research on a broad front in the atmospheric sciences, training of scientists, and regulation of cloud seeding activities.

Therefore it is my view that enactment of this bill, in its present form, is not in the best interests of a speedy and orderly development

of a program for effective, beneficial utilization of atmospheric water resources. I propose to touch upon these various points in greater depth within this statement.

My views on several broad aspects of weather modification research and the role of Government in organizing for such research were covered recently in a statement before the Senate Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. I will not repeat that material; however, I can provide additional copies of it should you desire them.

It is instructive to discuss the present legislation against the backdrop of a national program in weather modification. The recent report of the National Science Foundation Special Commission on Weather Modification states the elements of a national program in the following way, to which I subscribe:

(1) Strengthened fundamental research in all phases of cloud and weather science.

(2) Development of the technology of weather and climate modification for deliberate intervention in atmospheric processes with consideration for social, biological, and legal aspects.

(3) Provision for operational application of this technology as rapidly as techniques are validated.

(4) Provision for regulation and protection of public interest while at the same time insuring advancement of the state of the

art.

Senator ANDERSON. Don't you agree those four fundamentals are pretty well subscribed to by nearly every one in this field? We all want to strengthen research, do we not?

Mr. BRAHAM. Yes, I think this is true. I think our differences in the point of discussion arise from the relative strength we place on the four and opinions as to how applicable today a provision such as No. 3 might be.

Senator ANDERSON. What I am trying to say is that, regardless of whether the Weather Bureau does it or Department of the Interior does it, or a committee of the NSF does it, these are the things we ought to do.

Mr. BRAHAM. That is correct.

ORGANIZATION FOR OUR EFFORT

I endorse the principle that we reaffirm the responsibility of the Department of the Interior for management of water resources throughout all of the United States and that we recognize that this responsibility extends to research and testing operations designed to improve and regulate the yield from atmospheric water resources.

I agree that weather modification studies have reached the point where it is necessary to test existing hypotheses in the context of local geographical and meteorological conditions. The mission responsibility of the Department of the Interior gives them clear motivation for assisting with these tests. But from my view as a scientist, their strengths center around testing and reduction to practice of promising cloud seeding techniques, as opposed to scientific analysis of clouds and weather processes on a broad front. Resources and competence for the latter are to be found in several Government departments and at universities.

We must recognize that present cloud seeding and weather modification techniques are crude and of limited application. Years, maybe decades, of basic study stand between us and the achievement in our quest for a truly usable technology of weather modification. Thus far, most cloud seeding tests have been limited to looking for overall effects. However useful such conclusions may seem, they are of the crudest kind of knowledge.

We must strive to understand why particular tests turn out as they do. Once we have confirmed that a particular cloud-seeding experiment produced changes in precipitation we immediately wonder whether the net effect was the small difference between many large positive and negative effects mixed together. We ponder, too, the outcome of tomorrow's test since tomorrow's meteorological situation will probably differ from today's, and we wonder how we might do even better. The present understanding of basic cloud physics is not adequate to extrapolate the results of a particular experiment to the thousands of other combinations of geography, meteorology, and seasonal situations in which precipitation modification may be desirable. Moreover, precipitation modification cannot be separated from most other weather modification efforts, for example, modification of severe storms, hailstorms, hurricanes, et cetera, will undoubtedly also affect their water yield.

Therefore, it is essential that we determine the why as well as the yes-no of cloud seeding.

It is my view that development of the science and technology of precipitation modification can only come as fast as there is increase of knowledge over the broad front of meteorology, and development of trained scientific talent in theoretical and experimental meteorology. The universities have a major role in these developments as also do several executive departments.

REGULATION OF SEEDING ACTIVITIES

There appears to be need for some sort of regulatory-licensing legislation to prevent mutual interference of worthwhile research projects, to give a platform for arbitration between sponsors for qualified research projects and commercial cloud-seeding interests, and to give the general public a spokesman in the planning and execution of major weather modifications experiments.

As has been pointed out many times, useful weather modification experiments are likely to be lengthy and are likely to require particular areas to be designated as target and control. This automatically forces the residents in these areas to accept the advantages and/or disadvantages which may accrue to them by virtue of being in the target and/or control area. These points speak for assignment of the regulatory-licensing responsibility to a particular government agency or board.

In

my view, it is crucial that this responsibility be vested in a group having no other interests in atmospheric sciences in general and weather modification in particular. The decisions of this regulatory body will be tough enough, without giving to that body the additional handicap of direct association with, or responsibility to, an agency having statutory responsibility or mission interest in the weather modification question.