Self selection in conspiracy theorists

[_Lemmie]

mikwut:

It presents the NIST produced facts that the fires were not hot enough to melt steel for it to weaken like Markk's horseshoe example.

I just glanced through your source mikwut, but I did notice that your statement above is incorrect. Your source argues that because there was “molten steel,” it must have been a thermite explosion, because the temperatures were not hot enough to cause molten steel to run down the sides of the buildings.

The temperatures were definitely hot enough to weaken steel, which is Markk’s point, and as for your source’s evidence that there was “molten steel” ?

Looking at pictures, and eyewitness accounts. Come on. That’s not science.

Given how bad the science in that section was, there’s no reason to slog through the rest.

[Guest]

It's good that Mikwut condescended, at my request, to say what he thinks the document he linked to has to contribute to the discussion. And I'm glad to see that his claims are now being answered quite effectively.

And it has pictures for readers like you Chap.

Um, mikwut, I have a degree in what amounts to applied physics and maths, including theory of structures, from what anyone would agree is an élite university by international standards. No doubt you have too, hence your little attempt at condescension. But of course we are both anonymous liars posting from our mothers' basements while eating discounted cheeseburgers and drinking own-brand cola, so who cares?

[_Res Ipsa]

Here’s another. The intent of the designers is irrelevant. One need only go as far as the Titanic to understand that.

[_mikwut]

Lemmie,

I just glanced through your source mikwut, but I did notice that your statement above is incorrect. Your source argues that because there was “molten steel,” it must have been a thermite explosion, because the temperatures were not hot enough to cause molten steel to run down the sides of the buildings.

The temperatures were definitely hot enough to weaken steel, which is Markk’s point, and as for your source’s evidence that there was “molten steel” ?

Looking at pictures, and eyewitness accounts. Come on. That’s not science.

Given how bad the science in that section was, there’s no reason to slog through the rest.

Your conflating two different parts of the paper. On page 11 under an orange side note you can see the common misunderstanding:

According to the NIST report: “At
any given location, the duration and
temperatures near 1,000°C, was
about 15 to 20 min. The rest of the
time, the temperatures were near
500°C or below…. The initial jet fuel
fires themselves lasted at most a few
minutes.”
“The fires melted the steel.”
Although some experts initially claimed
that fires had melted the steel, the
hypotheses put forward by FEMA and
NIST never involved the steel becoming
hot enough to melt. According to NIST,
the highest air temperatures reached
were 1,000°C (1,832°F), while steel
melts at about 1,500°C (2,732°F).

Maybe if your so definite you could show where NIST or FEMA argues the fires were definitely hot enough to melt steel.

mikwut

[_mikwut]

Honor,

You could probably safely say fire still hasn't caused the total collapse of a steel framed high rise building.

What one can't say is that the impact of an accelerating jetliner with a full fuel load slamming into a steel-framed high-rise building causing massive internal fire has never caused the total collapse of said building.

ETA: Key points related to the above from the NIST investigation report:

First, in the absence of structural and insulation damage, a conventional fire substantially similar to or less intense than the fires encountered on September 11, 2001 likely would not have led to the collapse of a WTC tower. Second, the towers likely would not have collapsed under the combined effects of aircraft impact and the subsequent multi-floor fires encountered on September 11, 2001 if the insulation had not been widely dislodged or had been only minimally dislodged by aircraft impact.

Yes that what was NIST concluded after many years I was pointing it out because Markk had said the fires initiated a weakening of the steel. The paper seems to claim otherwise.

The paper also provides argument against the NIST portion you quoted:

The fire protection in WTC 1 and WTC 2 consisted
primarily of “sprayed fire-resistive material,” or
SFRM. Some columns also had gypsum wallboard
enclosures, and some had a combination of both.
NIST’s probable collapse sequence depends heavily
upon the dislodgement of these materials by the
airplane impacts. In its final report on WTC 1 and
WTC 2, NIST concluded:
The WTC towers likely would not have collapsed
under the combined effects of aircraft impact
damage and the extensive, multi-floor fires
that were encountered on September 11, 2001,
if the thermal insulation had not been widely
dislodged or had been only minimally dislodged
by the aircraft impact.5
Yet NIST produced remarkably little evidence to
support its claim that fireproofing dislodgement
significantly affected the structures.
Because such dislodgement would not have been
visible from outside the buildings, the extent of
dislodgement had to be estimated based on where
NIST’s aircraft impact simulations predicted damage to wall partitions or furnishings. At the very end
of its investigation, NIST finally performed physical
testing “to provide evidence regarding the assumption that…the SFRM used for thermal insulation of
structural members was damaged and dislodged.”
This testing, contained in NIST’s “Debris Impact
Study,” involved shooting 15 rounds from a shotgun
at a flat steel plate and a metal bar coated with
fireproofing inside a plywood box. Referring to that
experiment, Kevin Ryan writes:
[I]t’s not hard to see that these tests actually
disproved their findings.... Nearly 100,000
blasts would have been needed based on NIST’s
own damage estimates, and these would have
to be directed in a very symmetrical fashion to
strip the columns and floors from all sides….
To put NIST’s pivotal claim to rest, there was
simply no energy available to cause fireproofing
loss. Previous calculations by engineers at MIT
had shown that all the kinetic energy from the
aircraft was consumed in breaking columns,
A photograph of WTC trusses with fireproofing.
41BEYOND MISINFORMATION
crushing the floors and destroying the aircraft
itself. But NIST’s tests indicate that 1 MJ of energy was needed per square meter of surface
area to sheer the fireproofing off…. [T]he extra
energy needed would be several times more
than the amount of kinetic energy available to
begin with.6
Moreover, fireproofing dislodgement could not have
contributed to the collapse of WTC 1, for it did not
occur where the collapse initiated. As shown in
Chapter 3, the collapse of WTC 1 started at the 98th
floor. Yet, according to NIST, no fireproofing was dislodged on any of the core columns on the 98th floor
or on the floor trusses supporting the 99th floor.

mikwut

[_mikwut]

Hi Markk,

Okay...

So then your position is it was a controlled demolition...masked by the hijacking of four airliners by foriegn national feigning to be terrorists, but were actually working for a Bush/Cheney backed operation to collapse the towers, damage the pentagon, and attack the White House.

Ummmm, no I never said anything like that.

Is it your position a airliner hit the pentagon, or a missile? I have heard this in the past. I will read through your link when I get a chance, maybe it explains this theory also.

Is that fair?

I'm just discussing the towers and science the paper presents respecting their collapse.

My position is that the airliners full of fuel severed main support columns, dumped burning fuel into the core shafts, heating steel supports, and softening them to the point of complete failure due to with gravity load.

Yes the paper seems to refute that by using NIST itself. The fires were never hot enough for your theory to occur.

Your theory demands these, and other, questions answered.

1. what team engineered the controlled demolition. The pentagon? Private engineers? Did Bush just make a phone call to these men and say (using your best Bush impersonation)" Hey, I need a war, I want to blow up the Twin Towers and ram high jacked planes into the White House and the Pentagon. Get on it boys, but don't let anyone find out...if you have any further questions just ask Dick, by the way...see if you can find some dumb foriegn nationals that will fly the planes into the buildings."
2. who performed, and how, the preparation work involved for a sequenced implosion, with the airliners. And where were the charges placed?
3. who recruited the so called terrorists, and why would they give their lives for a goverment operation. Or...were they really terrorists tricked into the operation? If the latter who did this, who set it up?
4. controlled demolition would take 1000's of feet of sequencing wires, from charge to charge to a central command center and control board...where was that and where were the wires ran? Underground? In the subway? overhead? If so was there a clean up crew removing all this evidence, and I have to ask..."who were these guys?"
5. How long did it take Bush, from inception to the end, plan and execute the operation?

We don't refute science by saying well if that science is true then we have to believe something too difficult to imagine. The science is first. If the collapse only could have happened one way then that's what happened.

mikwt

[_Lemmie]

Lemmie,

I just glanced through your source mikwut, but I did notice that your statement above is incorrect. Your source argues that because there was “molten steel,” it must have been a thermite explosion, because the temperatures were not hot enough to cause molten steel to run down the sides of the buildings.

The temperatures were definitely hot enough to weaken steel, which is Markk’s point, and as for your source’s evidence that there was “molten steel” ?

Looking at pictures, and eyewitness accounts. Come on. That’s not science.

Given how bad the science in that section was, there’s no reason to slog through the rest.

Your conflating two different parts of the paper. On page 11 under an orange side note you can see the common misunderstanding:

According to the NIST report: “At
any given location, the duration and
temperatures near 1,000°C, was
about 15 to 20 min. The rest of the
time, the temperatures were near
500°C or below…. The initial jet fuel
fires themselves lasted at most a few
minutes.”
“The fires melted the steel.”
Although some experts initially claimed
that fires had melted the steel, the
hypotheses put forward by FEMA and
NIST never involved the steel becoming
hot enough to melt. According to NIST,
the highest air temperatures reached
were 1,000°C (1,832°F), while steel
melts at about 1,500°C (2,732°F).

Maybe if your so definite you could show where NIST or FEMA argues the fires were definitely hot enough to melt steel.

mikwut

You are not understanding what you are reading. Here is what I said:

Your source argues that because there was “molten steel,” it must have been a thermite explosion, because the temperatures were not hot enough to cause molten steel to run down the sides of the buildings.

Which I followed with this:

The temperatures were definitely hot enough to weaken steel,

It is YOUR expert paper that argued, with NO scientific basis, that there was molten steel, which required an environment that could cause molten steel.

Mikwut:

Maybe if your so definite you could show where NIST or FEMA argues the fires were definitely hot enough to melt steel.

No, YOU are the one who has to argue that, because it is YOUR source that says there were rivers of molten steel.

I sense, from this exchange, that you don’t really understand the theory you are putting forward, but I could be wrong. Could you clarify what your theory is regarding the effects of the heat from the fires, and how that relates to the temperatures given in your paper?

[_mikwut]

Hi Doc,

So, Mikwut. What caused the collapse if NIST is wrong?

It took me about 4 years practicing law to learn the most important three words in the English language and sometimes the hardest to say are, I don't know.

miwkut

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Just a reminder for our CT friends, that the number of collaborators begin to balloon out of control if all of the people and institutions accused of playing a part in the cover-up are counted. They would have to have included the CIA; the Justice Department; the FAA; NORAD; American and United Airlines; FEMA; Popular Mechanics (who wrote a HUGE investigative piece that should be read by all CT’ers) and other media outlets; state and local law enforcement agencies in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New York; the NIST; and, finally and perhaps most prominently, the 9/11 Commission.

- Doc

[_Res Ipsa]

Just a reminder for our CT friends, that the number of collaborators begin to balloon out of control if all of the people and institutions accused of playing a part in the cover-up are counted. They would have to have included the CIA; the Justice Department; the FAA; NORAD; American and United Airlines; FEMA; Popular Mechanics (who wrote a HUGE investigative piece that should be read by all CT’ers) and other media outlets; state and local law enforcement agencies in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New York; the NIST; and, finally and perhaps most prominently, the 9/11 Commission.

- Doc

That just proves how deep the conspiracy goes.