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Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (2704)	1/21/2003 9:20:38 AM
From: MulhollandDrive	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25898

the burning of the oil kuwaiti oil fields...how about the deliberate dumping of oil into the gulf... do you remember the pictures of the thick layers of crude lapping up on the shores...the destruction of wildlife? saddam is a menace. simple. The Gulf War -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One of the greatest ecological disasters in history happened when Saddam Hussein used oil as a weapon in the Gulf War. The environmental attack came in two parts: the release of oil into the Gulf, and the burning of Kuwait's oil wells. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Water This prong of the attack was the release of a huge amount of oil into the Gulf - estimates range from 0.5 million to 11 million barrels, and average at about 6 million barrels. Compare this with the tremendous consequnces of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which was "only" 230,000 barrels. The oil formed a slick 30 miles long and 8 miles wide, which is about the same area as the Isle of Wight. The slick is thought to have killed between 15,000 and 30,000 birds. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The problem was not just the vast amount of oil in the Gulf, but also the nature of the Gulf itself. This inland sea is at most only 35m deep, and only has a narrow connection to the Indian Ocean through the Straits of Hormuz, which means that it takes between three and five and a half years for all the water in the Gulf to be changed, so there was no hope of the oil simply dispersing, as it did in the Braer spill. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Air Although the burning of Kuwait's oil wells (picture - 192KB) may have been intended as an economic weapon, the environmental conseqences were no less severe than those of the oil slick. It is estimated that about 67 million tonnes of oil were burned in total, which produced about 2.1 million tonnes of soot and 2 million tonnes of sulphur, one of the main causes of acid rain. Fortunately, the soot particles did not go any higher than 5,000 metres, which meant that they were washed down with the rain over the next two weeks. If the soot had got above the rainclouds, it would have remained up there, with severe consequences to the world's climate. As it was, the consequences for Kuwait were still harsh. The soot cloud made the daytime almost as dark as the night, and the World Health Organisation esimated that death rates in Kuwait rose by 10% over the following year because of associated breathing difficulties and skin problems. soton.ac.uk