(C)  1991 by Michael W. Adams

                      THE KUWAITI WELL FIRES

                       The Situation We Face



     As a recently retired Physicist with the Department
of Defense at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, just outside Washington,
D.C., I have been working in an advisory capacity with some of
the Army people who are addressing the fires and associated
smoke plume in the Kingdom of Kuwait and environs, and it is
time, I believe, for a little plain english on the subject. These
remarks are drawn both from my background as a petroleum engineer
in tie oil industry and as a former defense proffessional with the
United States Army.

     As I have worked this problem, from January 1991 to the present,
several significant data points have emerged:
1. The smoke plume from the well fires is now the size of Iraq.

2.  On 1 May 1991, the Mauna Loa Observatory on the Island of Hawaii
measured a 20-fold increase in the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
It is carbon soot, from the well fires in Kuwait.

3. At this writing, the fires have generated 15 million tons of smoke.
The smoke plume is hovering at 8-12 thousand feet above ground level.

In addressing this situation, one is well advised to follow the

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example of professors Einstein and Boltzman, and "look to the
Physics." In  this  case,  the  Physics  is  quite simple: it
is  plain old-fashioned  Max  Planck  blackbody radiation.  We
have a  cloud filled  up  with  a  massive  amount of carbon
-- billions of tiny, microscopic carbon particles covered with
oily soot.  As the radiant energy  from  the  sun strikes the
carbon, it heats up, and  emit's heat  to  the surrounding air.
The air expands and rises, carrying the carbon particles with it.
The  rate of  ascent  depends o two factors: the mass (size)  of
the  smoke  plume,  and  the intensity of the sun's
energy which is striking the smoke plume.

     As we move into the Summer, the  moisture  content  of the
air in the Gulf region  falls  drastically:  the  area turns into a
furnace. As that happens, the intensity of the sun's energy hitting
that cloud will increase considerably. And as the wells burn, the
mass of the smoke plume is increasing continuously.  So both factors
which  determine the rate of ascent of the smoke plume ( how high it
will rise into the atmosphere ) are increasing.  And so the rate of
ascent of the smoke plume will increase, effectively without Iimit.
This phenomenon, called "self-lofting," has already been verified in
the laboratory:  soot-laden  smoke from burning oil, when struck by
sunlight, rises by itself. it "pulls itself up by its boot straps."
Carl  Sagan  and

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     Richard Turco are the principal investigators of this phenomenon,
which  has  been  verified  in  experimental  fires. This is in the open
literature   ( Oil, War and the Environment ). Carl Sagan and Richard
Turco, 1991;  Distributed  by  "Globa Viewpoint," Los Angeles Times
Syndicate). What this means for the human race can be quickly told: a
Beast is crouching in the deserts of the Gulf region.  Befofe very long
by this coming Fall if nothing is done by the U.S. Governmert -- the
Beast is going To stand up on it's hind legs and stare us in the face.

     This is  what the Physics tells us will happen: as the smoke plume
 heats up, it will begin to rise into the stratosphere. As that happens,
 the soot-laden carbon will drift upward with -the smoke, and be caught
 in the jet stream. From there, it will be carried over the entire extent
 of the  upper atmosphere,  starting with the Northern Hemisphere.  As
 time passes, more and more of the carbon will be thrown upward as the
 lofting process accelerates. Once aloft, the carbon soot  will absorb
 sunlight, blocking it from the earth (soot is one  of  the  darkest
 materials in nature,, and one of the best absorbers of sunlight).
 As more and more carbon  soot  accumulates  in  the  stratosphere, more
 and more sunlight will be absorbed.  That is, less and less sunlight will
 reach the earth. The result will be at first a dimming of the atmosphere
 as seen from earth, then a grey out, and finally a black-out of all
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Sunlight will finally be filtered out by the suspended carbon particles.

     How long will this continue?  Latest calculations say that the
the residence time of the suspended particles in the atmosphere is 100
hundred years.

     What is the Government of The United States doing about this
situation?  Next to nothing.  The Harsh fact is that president Bush and
his administration do not want any negative environmental results to
tarnish the recent victory in the gulf.  The administration in Washington
is making a concerted effort to suppress and minmize the environmental
damage from these well fires in Kuwait, worse, the major media outlets
( networks and newspapers ) are cooperating in this ruinus refusal of
the Bush administration to face, and address, this catastrophe. The
result is that nothing is being done -- nothing substantive, that is --
tp avert what is now becoming the most massive environmental and human
disaster in recorded history.

     The results for the human race from this disaster can be quickly
told.  As the sunlight reaching the earth begins to dimish ,  there
will be massive crop failure worldwide ( and that includes our American
Midwest ).  As the spectre of starvation rises to meet us, the earth
will cool, and spring and summer will effectively disappear.  The result
will be social break down the collapse of civilization.

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     The critical point to be made here is that this is not science
fiction.  It is science fact!!!!  If the American public continues to
allow this President to sit and do nothing,  this is the future which
awaits us.

     What needs to be done can also be simply told.  What is needed is
 massive, immediate and total committement of the armed forces of the
 United States to take to the task of putting out these well fires, and
 suppressing the smoke plume which these fires are generating. ( This
 last can be accomplished by round-the clock dousing of the burning
 oil fieldswith water from Air Force tankers, plus a one-time effort
 to wash the soot-laden carbon out of the cloud which already has been
 generated.  The task is siziable, but it is well within capability of
 the Armed Forces the United States now has in the gulf region. )

     The only force on the face of the Earth capable of making an
  American President take action, and make hard costing choices, is the
  aroused might of the American People.  So in that sense it is the
  task of every man, woman and child in this country to put immediate
  pressure on, and the Bush administration, to take action now, while
  there is still time.

      Our lives, and the lives of our children, literally depend on it.

                             ( The End )