Farouk El-Baz
SPACE.com:
What got you involved in studying the effects of the war in Kuwait?EL-BAZ: We had organized something that is called the Third World Academy of Sciences so that we in the third world countries would have a voice among the big academies of sciences worldwide. Within this Third World Academy of Sciences, I was elected to be the chairman of a committee on global change and environmental hazards.
When the Gulf War erupted and 700 oil wells were blasted by the Iraqis, we realized instantly that there is going to be a major environmental problem. The Third World Academy of Sciences subsidized my going over there with a small scientific team, to see the effects in the Gulf region in general.
Naturally, we started in Kuwait and I started before the rest of the team. I was on the first civilian plane ever to land in Kuwait. It flew from Cairo to Kuwait. I think it was the end of March 1991.
SPACE.com: Can you describe your first view of Kuwait when you got there?
EL-BAZ: Way before we crossed the border between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait on the flight, the whole scene completely disappeared. I could not see a single thing. Not the dunes, not the towns that I am familiar with, not the roads in the desert, not a thing.
The pilot started the descent and then we began getting into that smoke layer. The whole plane was completely enveloped in this darkness. It was incredibly thick.
So here we are, under this enormous canopy of black and we descend, and we come down. And you see this canopy of black on top of you.
So at daylight you're walking as if you are at midnight. You don't even see the lights of cars, the few cars that were in the town then. You don't see a thing because of this incredibly thick, dark, black smoke.
SPACE.com: So this was worse than you had anticipated?
EL-BAZ: A lot worse. So, we drove around the country for four days going to different places, going to the oil wells.
SPACE.com: I assume it was not safe for you to get too close to these wells because, as you say, they were an inferno.
EL-BAZ: Yes. We could feel the heat and we could stop. One thing that keeps you away was the continuous roar of the fire. That was very scary, the roar.
Actually, the outside "collar" of the oil column burns.
SPACE.com: The outside layer of oil?
EL-BAZ: The outside layer, because it's the only part that gets in touch with oxygen. The middle layer doesn't burn because it doesn't have any oxygen. So I realized there was going to be a hell of a lot of oil in little droplets that is flying all over the place, with the soot and the smoke.
SPACE.com: It's pumping oil into the atmosphere.
EL-BAZ: Yes.
SPACE.com: As you stood there watching this, did you have a sense that this was an environmental catastrophe?
EL-BAZ: I knew that that was going to be an environmental catastrophe by any stretch of the imagination. And I knew the results of that were going to be with us maybe forever.
In addition, we encountered several oil wells that were exploded but did not catch fire. So they were just spewing their oils and the oil made little streams until it went to low areas and made the lakes.
SPACE.com: Lakes of oil.
EL-BAZ: Lakes of oil all over the place. [We wondered,] will this oil seep through the ground? How deep is it going to seep? The Kuwait oil has vanadium and cadmium and niobium in it. Heavy metals and poisonous [substances].
There was something else that became paramount in my mind. The surface of Kuwait is covered by little pebbles that protect the fine-grained sand particles beneath from the action of wind.
That is called the desert pavement. It lags behind after the wind "weeds out" all the fine grains. It armors the surface from further erosion by the wind.
SPACE.com: And it keeps it stable?
EL-BAZ: It keeps it stable.
So that is the situation before the war. Here come soldiers from every place, both the Iraqis and from the Allies. And soldiers in the desert have to dig to make themselves bunkers, to make places for the storage of the food, to make ditches.
So you have this digging where you disrupt the desert pavement layer, and you expose an enormous amount of sand to the action of wind. That sand is going to form dunes and the dunes will move and they will multiply. And they will cause havoc to plantations, roads, airports -- all the infrastructure that is in their path.
SPACE.com: So this desert pavement that kept the conditions in Kuwait stable for centuries has now been completely disrupted?
EL-BAZ: Completely disrupted.
That is going to a problem for not centuries, but millennia; and it is not going to affect Kuwait alone, it is going to move on to Saudi Arabia and it will be a real -- we're adding vast numbers of dunes to a place that did not have these kinds of dunes.
SPACE.com: What have you learned by studying the satellite images since the war?
EL-BAZ: We had a three-year program sponsored by the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences to buy all the satellite images, to make comparisons of the land before the war and after the war, and to check it in the field and figure out and make maps, and so on. We had a combination of all possible sources of satellite images.
SPACE.com: What did you see in the images?
EL-BAZ: Dark tails, very clear, sometimes from a single well by itself, or sometimes from a huge oil field with hundreds of wells. So this can cover very large areas.
So I went to these places to look at them. And lo and behold, this is a whole new rock layer that formed. I called it "tarcrete." Because it is like concrete, but made of tar where the oil droplets and soot landed on the desert pavement, mixed with the gravel and sand and hardened into a real layer.
So we measured it, and made maps and measured the composition.
SPACE.com: All in all, how serious do you think the impact of the war is on the long term? Do you think we got away with relatively little long-term impact or do you think we have to worry about the effects for human beings for the coming decades?
EL-BAZ: I personally believe the effects are going to be long-lasting. Not decades, but centuries -- if not millennia.
SPACE.com: What has this whole experience taught you about the effects of war? Has it given you a perspective you didn't have before?
EL-BAZ: Absolutely, that the environment of the Earth is in balance. It is the disruption of that that causes disaster.
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