Subject: Forwarded: NEW PERSPECTIVES
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comments:
From: Dave Iverson:R04A
Date: Dec 20,91 5:18 PM
A little less than a year has gone by since the Persian Gulf War.
Yet so much has happened. It is interesting to take stock in what we
believed then. David Wickwire sent this in to help us do just that..
Note his comments just below...Dve.
Previous comments:
From: WICKWIRE, DAVID:R04F15A
Date: Dec 20,91 2:28 PM
Dave--I found it interesting to re-read the attached. In retrospect,
it took a relatively short time for the fire crews to control the
burning oil wells. When we consider what the dooms day sayers were
predicting, it makes me wonder why I even considered believing them
in the first place! I can recall about 1974 when we were nearly out
of oil--thus the long lines at gas stations. Also, about that time,
I was made aware that the tropical rain forests were being destroyed
at such a rate that they would be entirely gone in 10 years.
Perhaps a real lesson here for us is that we should not change our
organizational thoughts overnight. In many cases the "new" thinking
just may not be the most accurate or desirable.
-------========X========-------
January 24, 1991
The Environmental Impact of Persian Gulf Oil Fires:
Polarization in the Scientific Community
This past week the world stood still, monitoring news about each incoming
Iraqi SCUD missile, fearing chemical warfare attacks on Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Even as people continue to wait for such an attack, with gas masks in place,
another horror - perhaps even much greater - looms on the horizon: massive oil
well and refinery fires. Over the weekend Saddam Hussein's troops set fire to
the first oil wells and storage facilities in Kuwait. Will these fires will have
major environmental effects, in both the near- and long-term? Members of the
scientific community are polarized in their answers.
The Doomsdayers
At a world climate conference last December, Abdullah Toukan, scientific
advisor to King Hussein of Jordan, suggested that setting fire to Kuwaiti oil
wells could create a 900-mile-diameter cloud of soot covering almost all of the
Persian Gulf. He suggested that the inferno would advance the onset of global
warming by 30 years. Similar warnings were issued by the environmental group,
"Friends of the Earth." Toukan warned that short-term effects would include the
dissemination of hydrogen sulfide gas southward over Saudi Arabia - with
possible impacts to humans worse than the mustard gas the Iraqis have
stockpiled. But there is more. Within a year, some say, there might be a
worldwide cooling if the clouds reach the upper atmosphere.
Carl Sagan and other noted astronomers have guessed that major fires,
like those created from detonating 1200 oil wells could result in a "year
without summer," similar to the year after the Tambora volcano exploded in
Indonesia in 1816. In the wake of that historic explosion, there were widespread
crop failures extending to crops here in the US. There is reason to believe that
there would again be massive crop failures should such events unfold, and dust
clouds be drawn up into the upper atmosphere.
The Naysayers
Many disagree with the doomsdayers. Pentagon advisors have discounted the
possibility of such global near-term effects, basing their predictions on models
that forecast chiefly localized consequences, with the clouds retained in the
lower atmosphere.
The London Economist also dismisses major near-term concerns about global
warming, claiming that "[p]eace-loving greens (and monarchs) exaggerate."
"Burning oil wells could do a lot of harm, giving off global warming carbon
dioxide. But the daily amount would probably not exceed the output of Los
Angeles, which burns some 2 million barrels of oil a day." The Economist left
the short-term cooling debate up for grabs, but suggested that most likely only
a small amount of dust and sand would be catapulted into the upper atmosphere.
Further, they guessed that the fires in the Gulf would be relatively
short-lived. Quoting the president of an American company retained to manage
fire-fighting in the Gulf, the Economist noted: "'It would be months, not years
before the fires would all be controlled.' 'We would control the biggest
blowouts first, so that we would be dealing with a declining amount of wells
each day.'"
The Rest of Us
In a world where there is widespread and increasing disagreement in the
scientific community on such important matters, it is apparent that strategic
and tactical decisions must be made in the face of great uncertainty and very
high risk. Military strategists and politicians must attempt to err on the side
of safety, and develop plans that will minimize harm both to the environment and
to the inhabitants thereof. In developing these plans we must be prepared for
contingencies and be ready to adapt our plans to emergent circumstance.
Those of us who manage the resources of the planet have similar
responsibilities. The consequences of action in the Persian Gulf are acute and
near-term, as well as long-term and cumulative - and rightly have the attention
of our nation and world for now. But not many days ago, the actions of resource
managers in the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management had the
country's attention - and will again. Like the Persian Gulf crisis, the crisis
in resource management worldwide has long-term and cumulative effects. And the
two crises are intertwined in cumulative effect on the earth. In both crises,
we should be taking stock of probable consequences of action, and developing our
plans (contingency plans) accordingly.
We need to better understand the widening gulf of opinion in the
scientific community. Increasingly, we will be forced to act in settings of high
uncertainty and high risk, with members of the scientific community - these
venerable experts to whom we would have entrusted our lives not too many years
ago - lined up on all sides of pressing issues.
Dave Iverson..