McMurdo Station, Antarctica, Jan. 10— I am not very good at science, and will not pretend to know what I am talking about. But that should not prevent me from calling to your attention the Antarctic, where fascinating things are happening under the aegis of a little-known treaty among a dozen nations which, incredibly, was also signed by the Soviet Union. I say incredibly, because the treaty calls on signatory powers not only to adjourn without prejudice any territorial claims in Antarctica, but to publish all information developed in Antarctica, and to permit representatives of other nations to visit each other’s scientific installations and to probe into the work being done. This means, if you can imagine it, that an American scientist can actually take residence in a Soviet installation and rummage about, looking through Soviet telescopes, or whatever it is scientists do, taking notes, feeding computers and exchanging scientific shop-talk.
What kind of talk? The lineaments of the situation are as follows. Antarctica is about the size of the United States and Mexico. Its coastline is eighteen thousand miles long. During the winter, the ice doubles the size of the continent. The ice at the South Pole is about two miles thick. If the continent were to melt, it would raise the water level of the world by two hundred feet, which means that the first 28 storeys of the Empire State Building would be, well, useless. The ice in Antarctica is a deposit of 90 per cent of the fresh water supply of the earth.
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