Word: soots
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...might disrupt the global climate by causing a "nuclear winter" have vanished, some scientists are making new predictions that catastrophic effects could be felt hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles beyond Kuwait's borders. Researchers still have little information about the size of the giant black cloud of oil, gases, soot and smoke being pumped into the atmosphere hour after hour, day after day. But they now fear that what happens to this noxious mass during the next few weeks may affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people...
...gulf region is about to enter a particularly delicate period, when the shamal winds in Iran, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula create huge sandstorms that blow southward. This year's storms could suck up soot from the oil fires and unusually large amounts of dirt loosened by explosions and the movement of armies during the war. Intensified by heat from the fires, the storms could spread a mist of soot and oil across a belt of countries, ranging from Saudi Arabia to India. Apart from posing a health threat to the people closest to ground zero, the pollution is likely...
...until last fall that a team of scientists produced visible aggregations of buckyballs. At first, University of Arizona physicist Donald Huffman and his German colleague, Wolfgang Kratschmer, thought they had come up with nothing more extraordinary than a thimbleful of grimy soot. Then their microscope revealed a swarm of translucent specks that sparkled like stars in a moonless sky. "As soon as we saw these beautiful little crystals," Huffman recalls, "we knew we were looking at something no one had ever seen before...
...most pressing problem is posed by the fiery oil wells, which after a month of continuous burning will create enough smoke and soot to cover an area half the size of the U.S., according to some projections. The by-products of combustion include carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and, because of the high sulfur content of Kuwaiti crude, a good deal of sulfur dioxide -- a prime component in acid rain...
Kuwait is burning -- physically, politically and spiritually. Kuwait City, where 80% of the prewar population of 2 million lived, is a sad, lonely town. The skyscrapers are abandoned, their ground-level shops have been looted, and nearly everything is covered with an oily soot, a reminder of the ongoing conflagration outside the capital -- the hundreds of oil-well fires depleting the nation's lifeblood at a rate far greater than anyone had predicted...