From: carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Carl J Lydick)
Subject: Re: Letters to the Editor:  Blazing Ta
Reply-To: carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU
Organization: HST Wide Field/Planetary Camera
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 04:46:23 GMT

In article <1466601724@igc.org>, Claire Gilbert <cgilbert@igc.org> writes:

This is my response to all the recent Blazing Tattles postings.

On the subject of citrus groves in Florida, Claire points out that they appear
to be a victim of a fungicide called Benlate, but then speculates that the
reason this happened is that the Florida weather for the past year might have
encourage fungus growth, hence necessitation additional use of fungicide.  My
response to that is:

>There is probably a greater need for fungicide as
>fungus grows more readily in an atmosphere disturbed by haze and
>other climate changes; and it also may actually act differently in
>the presence of haze and other air pollution.

You really ought to get more information about Benlate and the problems first.
Among the things you need to find out are:  Just what happened?  Did Benlate
turn out to have undesired short-term effects?  Long-term effects?  Was a batch
of Benlate contaminated with something that caused problems?  If so, were those
problems that show up quickly or was there a delay?  Is Benlate a new product,
or has it been in use for some time? Rather than speculating, why not find out
whether fungicide use in Florida actually increased in the last year and a
half?  If it did, then your speculation may have some basis (though really,
you'd also have to check the usage in the past year and a half against the
trend before that point.  If it didn't then your speculation is groundless.

>                    THE BIGGEST BOMB ON EARTH
>                          by Joe Vialls

>     Despite strong protests from a multitude of countries
>including Egypt and Syria, the Bush Administration is still
>considering further 'military' action against Iraq.  The last U.S.
>excursion up the Persian Gulf resulted in the destruction of major
>oil fields, and the deaths of 70,000 innocent women and children. 
>If the Bush Administration has a second go and accidentally drops
>a stray napalm pod on northern Kuwait, it could trigger an
>explosion that would make a 50 megaton 'nuke' look like a
>firecracker casually thrown on the fourth of July.

Claire, unless Kuwait is so inundated with well-mixed hydrocarbons and air that
a stray spack could ignite it, there's no way I can conceive of such an
explosion being triggered by napalm.

>     When the firefighters returned from Kuwait last November, they
>forgot to tell the world about the large number of high pressure
>wells that were still spewing crude oil and gas onto the ravaged
>landscape.  They also forgot to explain how oilmen were to cap high
>pressure wells that would eventually be awash in huge lakes of
>crude oil bubbling with explosive gas.

If the gas is bubbling out and if it's not set off by any stray spark or the
flame from somebody's cigarette lighter, it's going to diffuse into the
atmosphere and be carried away by the wind.  Not likely to cause an explosion.

>     Under normal circumstances in the west oilmen always stop the
>oil flow before putting out the fire.  In the case of almost every
>blowout that has not ignited spontaneously in the past, fires have
>been deliberately lit to burn off the oil and gas -- keeping it
>clear of the well control crews while they stopped the oil flow. 
>In Kuwait, though, the reverse technique was used for reasons that
>have not yet been made clear.

I'd think they'd be pretty clear:  By the time the fire crews got there, there
was already enough oil on the ground that setting such fires would've prevented
access to the well-head.

>     A week after the Emir of Kuwait threw the switch that stopped
>the last fire, the British New Scientist sounded a delicate warning
>about non burning gushers, and commented on oil lakes:
>     "In the northern oilfield, many small lakes have run together
>to form rivers that stretch for many kilometers."
>     One of those small lakes is known to be about a meter deep and
>measures 8 by 5 kilometers.  It sounds quite small and shallow
>until figures are fed into a computer, revealing a volume in excess
>of 230 million barrels of crude oil.  Like other small lakes and
>rivers that surround it, the crude oil can hold up to about 25%
>gas.  Exactly the same sort of gas the reduced the North Sea Piper
>Alpha drilling platform to a twisted, charred mass of steel in
>second.

But the gas, if volatile, will escape from the oil in a matter of days.  The
reason the damage was done to the platform was that the oil was still under
pressure, and the gas therefore couldn't escape.  You can't simply multiply the
effects of the explosion on the platform by the ratio of the volume of oil on
the ground in Kuwait to the volume of oil involved at the drilling platform.

>     As the Bush Administration girds itself for another onslaught
>on Iraq, the increasing ambient air temperatures in the Middle East
>ensure the silent release of an ever increasing amount of gas from
>the lakes to the atmosphere, steadily forming a gas cloud of truly
>mammoth proportions.

If there were no such thing as wind, there might be some foundation for this
claim.

>     Things will get a wee bit risky when U.S. fighter-bombers
>streak across the area, on the way from the Gulf to kill a few more
>thousand women and children.
>     If a single fighter-bomber flies through the edge of that gas
>cloud with its afterburners glowing white-hot, or if a nervous
>pilot clicks the wrong switch and releases napalm pods into the
>lake, we have all the ingredients for the world's biggest bomb.  To
>even begin to comprehend the magnitude of what might happen at that
>precise point in time, it is necessary to understand how the
>American FAE (Fuel Air Explosive) weapon works, for the general
>principle is exactly the same.

Yes, it is.  And do you know what the most difficult thing to achieve with a
fuel/air explosive is?  Getting the mixture of fuel and air just right before
igniting it.  Timing is critical.  Try to ignite it too soon, and you get a
fizzle.  Try to ignite it too late, and nothing happens.

     While this is happening, the special package is slowly falling
>through the cloud itself, under its own parachute.  The instant its
>internal gas sensor detects that the gas/air ratio is just right,
>it closes a circuit that fires a white hot incendiary mounted
>directly beneath.

So you DO know that you have to get the mixture just right.

>     In a millisecond, the cloud explodes with sufficient force to
>reduce stone buildings to dust over an area of some 2 to 3
>kilometers.  Further out from the blast, oxygen is torn from the
>atmosphere so fast to feed the explosion, all humans in range have
>their lungs ripped out through their mouths instantly.

Claire, you obviously know very little about either chemistry or physics. 
First, the oxygen is not "torn from the atmosphere."  What little is removed
from the surrounding atmosphere to be burned by the fuel/air bomb diffuses. 
This is a relatively slow process.  The shock wave from the fuel/air bomb
reaches the person long before any effects from diffusion could be detected.
Second, any reduction in pressure is compensated for by the combustion
products.  Let's look at a few hydrocarbon oxidation reactions:
	Fuel name	Fuel		Oxygen		CO2	H2O
	Methane:	1CH4	+	2O2	=>	1CO2  +	2H2O
	Ethane:		2C2H6	+	7O2	=>	4CO2  +	6H2O
	Benzene		2C6H6	+	15O2	=>	12CO2 +	6H2O
	Iso-octane:	2C8H18	+	25O2	=>	16CO2 +	18H2O
In the first reaction, we start with 3 molecules and end with 3 molecules;
in the second reaction, we start with 9 molecules and end with 10 molecules;
in the third reaction, we start with 17 molecules and end with 18 molecules;
in the fourth reaction, we start with 27 molecules and end with 34 molecules;
In each case, we end up with MORE molecules than we started with.  There
CANNOT, therefore, be a drop in pressure.  And this doesn't even take into
account the thermal expansion associated with the explosion.  
Finally, oxygen accounts for 20% of the atmosphere.  If I recall correctly,
when you're diving, the pressure increases at approximately 1 atmosphere every
45 feet.  That means that oxygen has a partial pressure amounting to about 9
feet of water.  That means that even if the explosion somehow magically removed
ALL the oxygen from the air, didn't replace it with anything else, and didn't
heat the air up, it would be equivalent to coming from the bottom to the top of
a swimming pool.  Hardly enough to rip your lungs out.

>     The Bush Administration and the Pentagon probably nicknamed
>the FAE "The Poor Man's Atom Bomb" in a deliberate attempt to
>mislead the public.  Such rhetoric is confusing.  By comparison
>with the 15,000 lb. FAE, a low-yield tactical nuclear shell fired
>from a 155mm howitzer is a little more than a damp squib.

I'm afraid you're just completely wrong there.

>                        The Rumaila Bomb

>     Beyond any doubt, Rumaila is a potential giant FAE with powers
>that disturb many physicists.  Bearing in mind that the big U.S.
>FAE contain a mere 15,000 pounds of liquid gas, it is impossible to
>estimate the overall explosive potential of the gas cloud covering
>a huge 230 million barrel oil lake during peak summer temperatures.

If, and only if, the fuel/air mixture were to somehow manage fortuitously to
be adjusted just right, there were NO WINDS for months so that all the gas
could escape from the oil, and there were no convection currents to allow the
gas to mix with atmosphere other than near ground level, your hypothesis might
make some sense.  In point of fact, it's more likely you, I, and everyone
reading the sci.environment and sci.geo.meteorology newsgroups are all going to
be struck by falling aircraft in the next year.

>     I spoke to several physicists who initially plugged
>approximate figures into their computers, went a sick shade of gray
>and then tried again.  None were prepared to be quoted by name and
>the only comment I can repeat was from one physicists who, turning
>from his computer screen wide eyes, drew in a long deep breath.
>     "Shit!" was all he said.

Did you bother to tell them about exactly what you were talking about?  Or did
you simply take the figures for the total amount of gas involved and ask them
"Suppose this were mixed in the appropriate proportions for a fuel/air
explosive.  What would happen?"

>                      TECHNICAL COMMENTARY

>     "Doug (Lowenthal) and I are convinced we did measure Kuwait
>oil smoke in Hawaii....We show in our paper that it (detection) can
>happen with the appropriate meteorology.  (Our work) suggests that
>long range transport (of smoke) may even be possible at low
>elevations, something completely ignored by other researchers...
>     "...we take a definite aversion to all of the comments which
>were made early on that the smoke could not travel far.  That was
>nonsense.  The question which should have been asked was how far it
>is transported and in what concentrations.

Which is exactly what you were told in sci.environment and
sci.geo.meteorology last year.

>                  "BAY FOG" BLANKETS THE EARTH

>     Since March of 1991, I have been yapping about the white skies
>and ground level haze which produces effects around streetlights
>and headlamps.  I admit that the latter affects are not easily
>discernable, and I don't know why some people can see them and some
>people can't.  I thought the effects were from the oil well fires
>in Kuwait, but they haven't gone away.  Some of them, particularly
>the haze around the sun, especially when it is setting and rising,
>is explained by the effects of the Mt. Pinatubo eruption, but I saw
>the white afternoon skies and hazy sun before Pinatubo erupted.  I
>am not belittling Pinatubo effects, but I am saying that there is
>something else going on as well.
>     While I was busy yapping about the unusual lower level haze in
>Florida, I also concluded that it was in the global air because it
>was present no matter what the weather conditions, meaning that
>sometimes the air at ground level originated high up in the
>atmosphere and other times it was carried for thousands of miles
>near ground level; sometimes it originated in the west; othertimes
>in the east, the north, or the south.  Many friends tried to
>convince me that what I was observing, if it existed at all, was
>local phenomena, but I wouldn't listen to "reason."

But Claire, if the haze was a lower-level effect, then it could easily have
been a local effect that caused it.  No matter which direction the wind is
blowing in the Los Angeles basin, as long at it't not blowing really fast
(i.e., Santa Ana conditions), the air in the San Gabriel Valley is brown.

>     I began to travel out of Florida in early July of last year;
>and lo!  I saw the haze over Lake Michigan, and I saw it from the
>air everywhere.  (Chicago also had a black smokey haze over it, but
>over Lake Michigan was this whitish haze that looked like a fog.) 

Gee.  Early summer near a lake.  Who would've expected to see fog?

>From the air while flying, I saw layers of white haze almost
>everywhere.

So have I.  Just about every time in the last 20 years when I've flown.

>Again last October I flew to Syracuse, N.Y., and
>observed the same ground level haze there and at Niagara, and saw
>the hazy sunrises and sunsets.

Er, Claire, the northeastern U.S. tends to have fog in the fall.

>     Now I have completed driving 6,000 miles from Florida to New
>England and across the U.S.  The most striking single new phenomena
>I saw was "fog" blurring hills and mountains.  It looks like "(San
>Francisco) Bay fog" but of course it isn't.  On the outskirts of
>Allentown, Pa., I saw this fog.

Have you ever heard of the Smoky Mountains?  Pine forests tend to be hazy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carl J Lydick | INTERnet: CARL@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU | NSI/HEPnet: SOL1::CARL

Disclaimer:  Hey, I understand VAXen and VMS.  That's what I get paid for.  My
understanding of astronomy is purely at the amateur level (or below).  So
unless what I'm saying is directly related to VAX/VMS, don't hold me or my
organization responsible for it.  If it IS related to VAX/VMS, you can try to
hold me responsible for it, but my organization had nothing to do with it.
Newsgroups: sci.environment