Word: clouding
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BURNING OIL FIELDS. Saddam is assumed to have mined all or most of Kuwait's 360 operating oil wells. If he throws the switch, the resulting fires could send forth a vast cloud of dense black smoke that would foul the air and darken skies as far east as Afghanistan and northern India. After 30 days, smoke could cover an area half the size of the U.S. But because oil gushes naturally to the surface in most Kuwaiti wells, with no need of pumping, it will go on feeding a blaze until someone puts it out -- months or years later...
Even a runt reactor can contaminate the nearby area if its radioactive core is fractured, in which case some radioactive particles could remain in the soil for decades. But the prospect that a radioactive cloud will spread across the region is universally discounted. "You would need a direct hit to splatter the stuff around," says Thomas B. Cochran of the New York City-based Natural Resources Defense Council. "And then it would be only a local hazard...
...about the conduct of the war is small. The public does not know how effective the allied strikes against Iraq have been, for example, or how heavy the civilian casualties may have been. Clausewitz's "fog of war" -- a phrase endlessly repeated these days -- has become a bright electrical cloud of unknowing...
...processing plants. If those devices are set off, the subsequent conflagration could create "a nuclear-winter-like situation," asserts Paul Crutzen, director of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. Jordanian experts say the wells could burn 10 million bbl. of oil a day, releasing a vast cloud of black smoke into the stratosphere. Such a cloud has the potential to screen sunlight, reduce temperatures and damage crops throughout the northern hemisphere. Not all experts agree with the grim forecasts, contending that Kuwaiti oil fields are too far apart to combine into one conflagration. If only some wells blow...
Washington: Stanley W. Cloud, Laurence I. Barrett, Ann Blackman, Gisela Bolte, Ricardo Chavira, Jerome Cramer, Michael Duffy, Glenn Garelik, Dan Goodgame, Ted Gup, Richard Hornik, Julie Johnson, J.F.O. McAllister, Jay Peterzell, Michael Riley, Elaine Shannon, Dick Thompson, Nancy Traver New York: Joelle Attinger, Carl Bernstein, Martha Smilgis, Naushad S. Mehta Boston: Robert Ajemian, Sam Allis, Melissa Ludtke Chicago: Gavin Scott, Barbara Dolan, Elizabeth Taylor Detroit: S.C. Gwynne Atlanta: Joseph J. Kane, Don Winbush Houston: Richard Woodbury Miami: Cathy Booth Los Angeles: Jordan Bonfante, Jonathan Beaty, Scott Brown, Jeanne McDowell, Sylvester Monroe, James Willwerth, Sally B. Donnelly San Francisco: Paul...