Abstract
As the climax of the Gulf War approached, Saddam Hussein decided on a desperate and insane move: he had the contents of five Iraqi-flagged oil tankers dumped in the Mina al Ahmadi port in Kuwait. Also, the Iraqis opened the spigots of the oil-loading terminal off the Kuwaiti coast. A new kind of weapon was unleashed on the world: environmental terrorism. The ensuing Gulf oil spill was the largest spill in history, six to eight million barrels (the previous record: 4.2 million barrels dumped after the 1979 blowout of the Ixtoc well). It damaged a precariously fragile ecosystem. The Gulf is shallow and it is nearly enclosed. The average depth is a mere 110 feet. It takes 200 years to flush out and replace the stagnant gulf water.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
“It damaged a precariously fragile ecosystem,” Sharon Begley, “Saddam’s Ecoterror,” Newsweek, Feb.4, 1991.
“…the problems faced by Shell Oil Co.” C. Solomon, “Shell, a Fallen Champ of Oil Industry,” The Wall Street Journal, August 30,1991.
“The largest U.S. oilfield, located at Prudhoe Bay…” L.L. Lamberton, “Developing Oil and Gas Worldwide,” The Lamp, Fall 1992.
“…the Governor of Texas appointed a task-force…” Stabilizing U.S. Oil Prices, A Report Prepared for Governor William P. Clements, Jr., August 7, 1989, by a Task Force on Oil Price Stabilization, The University of Texas at Austin.
“There exists a surprising answer…” S.L. McDonald and S. Thore, “Auctioned Quotas to Limit U.S. Imports,” Journal of Petroleum Technology, December 1989, pp. 1332–1334.
“Electric utilities play a pivotal role…” S. Thore and R.J. Gonzalez, “On the Determination of the Equilibrium Price of Oil,” presented at the Tenth North American Conference of the International Association for Energy Economics, Houston, October 1988.
“According to the ‘Gaia’ theory…” See J. Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia, Bantam, 1990 and Scientists on Gaia, ed. by S. H. Schneider and P.J. Boston, MIT Press, 1991.
“This may not seem like much, but would mask…” K. von Moltke, “Global Environment — a Planet in Stress,” 1991 Britannica Book of the Year, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago 1991.
Checklist on Alternative Energy Sources, tidal energy: J. Kurtz, “Closing in on sea power with a three-armed bandit,” The New York Times, August 25, 1991.
“At the time of my regular state inspection, an optical scanner analyzes…” For calculations of the market values of rights to emit carbon dioxide under a hypothetical regime of international regulation, see A. Manne and R. Richels, “Global CO2 Emission Reductions — the Impacts of Rising Energy Costs,” The Energy Journal, 1991.
“In March 1979, at Three Mile Island…” S. Shulman, “Legacy of Three Mile Island,” Nature, March 1989.
“The U.S. pours close to half a billion dollars into fusion research…” R. Herman, Fusion: The Search for Endless Energy, Cambridge University Press, New York 1990.
“But behind the hoopla remained a deadly serious question…” E. Jarolim, “Yuppie Utopia: Touring the Biosphere,” The Wall Street Journal, May 26,1992.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1995 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Thore, S. (1995). Combustion, Fission, and Fusion. In: The Diversity, Complexity, and Evolution of High Tech Capitalism. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0659-7_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0659-7_9
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-4288-8
Online ISBN: 978-94-011-0659-7
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive