Loose Change - Part IV

[Belz...]

Well if I was anyone else I would be dead several times, but then again I refer you to my previous posts where I have clearly stated, THEY MAKE MISTAKES and ARE NOT GOD.

Oooh... You're GOooooooood, aren't you ?

 

[WildCat]

Sir Knight is obviously a paranoid schizophrenic, really why are you all arguing with him? I see people like this at work occasionally. They claim the gov't is breaking into their homes when they're not there, and painting the walls or re-arranging the furniture and such. They do this all w/o causing any damage to the doors whatsoever...

Really, it's a waste of time.

Sir Knight, you are seriously mentally ill and need to get help. I hope you get it before you hurt yourself or someone else.

 

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

Good grief. Okay (s)he doesn't know squat:

RE 1)

Post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this). This is the fallacy of assuming that A caused B simply because A happened prior to B. A favorite example: "Most rapists read pornography when they were teenagers; obviously, pornography causes violence toward women." The conclusion is invalid, because there can be a correlation between two phenomena without one causing the other. Often, this is because both phenomena may be linked to the same cause. In the example given, it is possible that some psychological factor -- say, a frustrated sex drive -- might cause both a tendency toward sexual violence and a desire for pornographic material, in which case the pornography would not be the true cause of the violence.

He create a strawman of your debunk in order to use a, poorly argued, counter-point of post hoc.

RE 2) (s)he is the one trying to shift the burden of proof. You have presented evidence supporting the status quo. Your opponent (the opposition) has the burden to show that the status quo is wrong.

RE 3) Not a strawman. You addressed the fire resistence of the steel, which was part of the point Fetzer was arguing. Even though you did not address the fire duration/temp it does not mean it was a strawman.

Straw man. This is the fallacy of refuting a caricatured or extreme version of somebody's argument, rather than the actual argument they've made. Often this fallacy involves putting words into somebody's mouth by saying they've made arguments they haven't actually made, in which case the straw man argument is a veiled version of argumentum ad logicam. One example of a straw man argument would be to say, "Mr. Jones thinks that capitalism is good because everybody earns whatever wealth they have, but this is clearly false because many people just inherit their fortunes," when in fact Mr. Jones had not made the "earnings" argument and had instead argued, say, that capitalism gives most people an incentive to work and save. The fact that some arguments made for a policy are wrong does not imply that the policy itself is wrong.

RE 4)

Argumentum ad verecundiam (argument or appeal to authority). This fallacy occurs when someone tries to demonstrate the truth of a proposition by citing some person who agrees, even though that person may have no expertise in the given area. For instance, some people like to quote Einstein's opinions about politics (he tended to have fairly left-wing views), as though Einstein were a political philosopher rather than a physicist. Of course, it is not a fallacy at all to rely on authorities whose expertise relates to the question at hand, especially with regard to questions of fact that could not easily be answered by a layman -- for instance, it makes perfect sense to quote Stephen Hawking on the subject of black holes.

Civil Engineers are relevant to the topic, therefore not an appeal to authority. Same burden of proof bs as in pt 2

RE 5) Same as #2. Your opponent is defending Fetzer, who is attacking the status quo. Burden of proof is on your opponent.

RE 6) Strawman. (s)he only addresses your personal attack, while ignoring your links that show Fetzer's calcs to be wrong

RE 7) Not a red herring. A red herring is

Red herring. This means exactly what you think it means: introducing irrelevant facts or arguments to distract from the question at hand. For example, "The opposition claims that welfare dependency leads to higher crime rates -- but how are poor people supposed to keep a roof over their heads without our help?" It is perfectly valid to ask this question as part of the broader debate, but to pose it as a response to the argument about welfare leading to crime is fallacious. (There is also an element of ad misericordiam in this example.)

It is not fallacious, however, to argue that benefits of one kind may justify incurring costs of another kind. In the example given, concern about providing shelter for the poor would not refute concerns about crime, but one could plausibly argue that a somewhat higher level of crime is a justifiable price given the need to alleviate poverty. This is a debatable point of view, but it is no longer a fallacious one.

The term red herring is sometimes used loosely to refer to any kind of diversionary tactic, such as presenting relatively unimportant arguments that will use up the other debaters' speaking time and distract them from more important issues. This kind of a red herring is a wonderful strategic maneuver with which every debater should be familiar.

You were addressing Fetzer's argumentum ad verecundiam (argument or appeal to authority).

RE 8) & 9) If you are lying (which I don't think you are) than your opponent should be able to provide evidence, not just say "You're lying"

RE 10) Large quanitities of aluminum in the structure. Satellite temp pics show sufficient heat for a long enough period afterwards. Thermite reactions are very fast, it does not linger"

RE 11) He ignores all of your counter-arguments; which already address what he is "resting" his case on

RE 12) Argument from personal incredulity. Also, he provides no evidence to support his assertion that the bodies in the photos were Pentagon employees only.

Re 13) What tailfin?

Re 14) You address the fact Fetzer provides no evidence supporting his claim. You opponent dismisses this as not refuting the point.

Argumentum ad ignorantiam (argument to ignorance). This is the fallacy of assuming something is true simply because it hasn't been proven false. For example, someone might argue that global warming is certainly occurring because nobody has demonstrated conclusively that it is not. But failing to prove the global warming theory false is not the same as proving it true.

Whether or not an argumentum ad ignorantiam is really fallacious depends crucially upon the burden of proof. In an American courtroom, where the burden of proof rests with the prosecution, it would be fallacious for the prosecution to argue, "The defendant has no alibi, therefore he must have committed the crime." But it would be perfectly valid for the defense to argue, "The prosecution has not proven the defendant committed the crime, therefore you should declare him not guilty." Both statements have the form of an argumentum ad ignorantiam; the difference is the burden of proof.

In debate, the proposing team in a debate round is usually (but not always) assumed to have the burden of proof, which means that if the team fails to prove the proposition to the satisfaction of the judge, the opposition wins. In a sense, the opposition team's case is assumed true until proven false. But the burden of proof can sometimes be shifted; for example, in some forms of debate, the proposing team can shift the burden of proof to the opposing team by presenting a prima facie case that would, in the absence of refutation, be sufficient to affirm the proposition. Still, the higher burden generally rests with the proposing team, which means that only the opposition is in a position to make an accusation of argumentum ad ignorantiam with respect to proving the proposition.

RE 15) Unsource claims.

Sorry I wasn't more thorough, but I haven't had any coffee yet. All quotes are from here http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html#Introduction

 

[negativ]

Well if I was anyone else I would be dead several times, but then again I refer you to my previous posts where I have clearly stated, THEY MAKE MISTAKES and ARE NOT GOD.

I just don't go down easily not that they haven't tried. I have plenty of documentation on that. And for the RECORD, I have said/stated that I have evidence of attempts on my life, I NEVER said they the CIA was directly responsible for that, what I did say was the CIA help set me up.
Maybe if it was the CIA that tried to kill me maybe I might not be posting, but then again I am not absolutely sure WHO tried to kill me every time but I know that my life has had several attempts on it, and I do know who tried to kill me on one occsion.

I would be very interested to know about these attempts on your life (details... methods, circumstances, etc) and how you were able to thwart them. Please be specific; none of this "I can't tell you" vaguery.

Most people go through life without having others attempt to kill them, let alone several times. CIA or not, I'm curious.

 

[Gravy]

I would be very interested to know about these attempts on your life (details... methods, circumstances, etc) and how you were able to thwart them. Please be specific; none of this "I can't tell you" vaguery.

Most people go through life without having others attempt to kill them, let alone several times. CIA or not, I'm curious.

I share your curiosity about Sir Knight, but I object to this thread being filled with his personal issues, so I started a new thread for him: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=62293

 

[negativ]

Yeah, I saw that after I posted. That'll teach me to read the rest of the thread before spouting off (maybe!)

 

[Sir Knight]

Sir Knight is obviously a paranoid schizophrenic, really why are you all arguing with him? I see people like this at work occasionally. They claim the gov't is breaking into their homes when they're not there, and painting the walls or re-arranging the furniture and such. They do this all w/o causing any damage to the doors whatsoever...

Really, it's a waste of time.

Sir Knight, you are seriously mentally ill and need to get help. I hope you get it before you hurt yourself or someone else.

Wow, such a strong statement with so little proof but an opinion and the sad thing is I wish you were correct but you are not anywhere close.

 

[brumsen]

Sir Knight is obviously a paranoid schizophrenic, really why are you all arguing with him? I see people like this at work occasionally. They claim the gov't is breaking into their homes when they're not there, and painting the walls or re-arranging the furniture and such. They do this all w/o causing any damage to the doors whatsoever...

Really, it's a waste of time.

Sir Knight, you are seriously mentally ill and need to get help. I hope you get it before you hurt yourself or someone else.

The observation that the debate with Sir Knight is not going anywhere and is thus a waste of time is obviously correct.
The conclusion about his mental health possibly is correct as well, but we can't really tell can we? Anyway, I take some remarks of people here advising SK to seek help as well-intended, and I hope he is intelligent enough to take it as such.
Further, I hope that there is no suggestion that anyone coming here with CT ideas is mentally ill.

 

[Belz...]

Fair enough, ok, 1. poisoning 2. Car set to blow up (this one was quite interesting and it was setup to look like an accident and it had worked it wouldn't have left any evidence. Depending on your point of view, mine is that I was fortunate the plan didn't work 3. Different Car tampered with to disable the air bag and there was a micro switch set underneath the dash that had disabled the rear brake lights so it wouldn't show on the dash they were not working.

Well I would like to take some credit here if I may, if you could allow me some lattitude here. I should be dead several times over but I am pretty good at playing chess here. I tend to side step some things that maybe others wouldn't have. So some of my suviveability has to do with ME and not just them being stupid.

Okay. I believe this is the time where I have to tell you to seek professional help.

 

[JamesB]

But,
1) at least it is a consistent stance;
2) how exactly is it supposed to be violating academic ethics? Depending on what principle you go by, one might be in violation for submitting something to a peer-reviewed academic journal when it is already published anywhere else; and/or, there needn't be a violation as long as the editor of the older publication agrees that the author may submit his article elsewhere.

Anyway... how does it follow that "we" "actually have higher standards"?

As long as the editor agrees? We are the editors. I explained that to him. The papers we write are serious, but calling it a journal is satirical. We decide what papers we want to write and post up. We were making the point that anyone can post something on the Internet and call it a journal. Jones has now proven this point for us.

As for higher standards, we don't include such items as Internet rumors about non-existent anti-aircraft guns at the Pentagon for starters. We don't use the neo-Nazi American Free Press as a primary source. We don't use pictures of steel beams cut by steelworkers during the cleanup and claim it was done by thermite. Among other things.

 

[delphi_ote]

There are probably only a few people that have all the answers and I am not one of them.

You don't seem to have any answers, Sir Knight.

 

[gumboot]

Guys;

I am far from a debating expert, so I was hoping you could help me with respect my posting of "Debunking Fetzers 15 Points"

I'll offer my tidbits, for what they are worth. I'm not in a position to research details at the moment, so where details need to be filled in I'll indicate. This is all from memory.

1. Noone in the last four years, who is serious about getting the truth out there, has claimed that "The planes by themselves" brought down the towers. Most experts, and non-experts now agree it was a combination of the plane crashes, the spread of jet fuel through out the building, and subsequent fires, that eventually brought down the towers.

I would make mention that in the calculations for a 707 impact, the affect of the fuel was not included because there was no way to do so. This is important for a number of reasons:
1) The weight of fuel adds kinetic energy
2) The fuel acted like a water-blaster, stripping steel of fire proofing at 500 MPH
3) The fuel itself, at these speeds, is capable of cutting through steel beams
As a result of not computing fuel, the impact survival assessment also did not take into account the fires that resulted from the fuel.

They were correct - the towers could withstand initial impact, and did - as demonstrated in the most powerful images of the 21st Century. It was additional factors that were NOT calculated that over-tipped the scale and led to collapse.

One of the few points Fetzer is right on, yes Steel "Melts" at 2800F. Fire as a result of JET FUEL ALONE only reaches about 1800F.

I would only add the actual figure at which steel loses 50% of its strength - it's something like 1100 degrees.

For starters, The ASTM tests did not conduct testing for 6 hours, but rather a maximum of 3.5 hours. If someone has this "Proof" from a definitive source that states that the ASTM E119 Performance testing on the WTC Steel showed that the Steel should have not lost any of its strength or integrity for SIX HOURS, please point me to this DEFINITIVE SOURCE.

I would quote the guy explaining why Ryan was fired from UL - his claims were false. to begin with, UL did not certify any steel used in the construction of the WTC.

Point:
4. If the steel had melted or weakened, the affected floors would have displayed completely different behavior, with some asymmetrical sagging and tilting, which would have been gradual and slow, not the complete, abrupt and total demolition that was observed.

I would replace your reponse with a much simplier one. He is completely right. And that is EXACTLY what did happen. There are numerous sources for reports from both NYPD aviation units and FDNY inside the lobbies that collapse was imminent. Good examples would be found in the following site:

Fatal Confusion - New York Times article on the WTC rescue operation

and

Fatal Confusion: The Emergency Response - A New York Times Interactive

A sag in the impact face was witnessed, which gradually became larger. Floor trusses can also be seen sagging in photos of the impact area. - All of this is in the NIST reports.

The collapse WAS gradual, but once it reached a critical point, the load exceeded what the columns around the impact zone could bear, and they failed. At that point it was all over. Note the initial global collapse was asymetrical in both towers, favouring the impact side.

5. There was not enough kinetic energy for the collapse of one floor to bring about the collapse of the next lower floor, even if the impact of the planes and the ensuing fires had been enough to cause the steel to weaken, which means that, even if one floor had collapsed due to the impacts and the fires, that could not have caused lower floors to fall.

This is a strawman. One floor did not collapse onto another. The entire impact zone failed, dropping the entire mass of the buildings above the impact zone through the collapsed floors and onto the first intact floor.

In the example of the North Tower, you're talking about the total mass of 12 floors collapsing through the 5 floors of the impact zone. At a height of 411m to the top floor, that gives us 3.7m per floor. So 12 floors accelerated through 18.5m before slamming into one floor. (One could further work out the pounds per square foot based on gravitational acceleration etc, if one had the mass of the buildings - I have heard it often estimated at 500,000 tonnes per tower which some consider a little high.)

In the South Tower the first intact floor had to deal with 28 floors crashing through 5 floors or 18.5m before slamming into it.

So as you can see, the claim "not enough kinetic energy for the collapse of one floor to bring about the collapse of the next lower floor" is a strawman.

They must prove there is not enough kinetic energy for 12 and 28 floors respectively to bring about the collapse of the next lower floor, after 18.5m of fall. (after this brief fall ( 1.9s) the mass will hit the first intact floor with an instantaneous speed of 68 km/h)

Point:
6. There was not enough kinetic energy for the collapse of one floor to bring about the pulverization of the next floor, even if the impact of the planes and the ensuing fires had been enough to cause the steel to weaken and one floor to collapse upon another, which required a massive source of energy beyond any that the government has considered.

This appears to just be the same as point 5.

Point:
7. Heavy steel construction buildings like the Twin Towers, built with more than 100,000 tons of steel, are not even capable of "pancake collapse,"

This is just a stupid comment. I don't even think it's worth responding to. "heavy steel"? As opposed to "light steel"? Fez is appealing to emotion by presenting an imagine of these massively strong structures that could withstand anything. This is nonsense. The higher the building, the less stable. A LOT of work goes into just making sure tall buildings can remains standing.

The weight of steel is also a strawman. I could build a skyscraper as high as the moon out of 10 million tonnes of "heavy steel". Impressive huh? I doubt it would stand up.

Judy Woods - Dental Engineer, Also believes the buildings should have toppled over like trees that are cut down, which as most REAL engineers point out, is impossible. Beyond that, There is numerous footage that times the collapse of one of the towers at between 20-30 seconds (9/11 eyewitness). Once again, Go to the right and read the papers...they make all of these matters quite clear, and they are written by TEAMS of MIT Structural and Civil Engineers.

Good sound response to me.

Point:
9. The towers are exploding from the top, not collapsing to the ground, where the floors do not move, a phenomenon that Judy Wood has likened to two gigantic trees turning to sawdust from the top down, which, like the pulverization of the concrete, the official account cannot possibly explain.

I wouldn't bother with a reply here. He is playing word games. "explode from top" and "collapse to ground" mean the same thing. Let me illustrate:

"fall from top"
"fall to ground"

He is using the "top" "ground" comparison to imply the buildings fell the OPPOSITE way to which they should have. This is nothing more than linguistic dishonesty, and of a very crude form. Of course the buildings fell from the top to the ground, the collapse point was near the tops. They appeared to "explode" because of the enormous energies involved.

10. Pools of molten metal were found at the subbasement levels three, four and five weeks later, an effect that could not have been produced by the plane-impact/jet-fuel-fire/pancake collapse scenario, which, of course, implies that it was not produced by such a cause.

I wouldn't bother debating the type of metal. The stuff I saw wasn't molten, but it was steel, and it was FRIKKEN hot. Turn his argument around on him. Intense subterranean fires burning for weeks after a building collapse can ONLY have occured if the buildings contained MASSIVE fires at the time of collapse - all that burning material would be buried.

Debunk:
11. Classic Demolition involves weeks of planting explosives in structurally key areas, and requires teams of demolition workers to do so. If this could possibly have been done, than...etc

Well covered.

12. The hit point at the Pentagon was too small to accommodate a 100-ton airliner with a 125-foot wingspan and a tail that stands 44 feet above the ground; the kind and quantity of debris was wrong for a Boeing 757: no wings, no fuselage, no seats, no bodies, no luggage, no tail! Which means that the building was not hit by a Boeing 757!

Your rebuttal is well covered for this one. You might want to add (not necessary) that the vast majority of an airliner is lightweight hollow aluminium (i.e. the wings, tail, etc). The vast bulk of an airliner's weight is contained in the bottom 1/3 of the fuselage and the engines. Thus expecting a hole stretching from wingtip to wingtip is laughable.

1. his jump from evidence to definitve proof, is a huge stretch.
2. The only footage released is a LOW REZ, Security Cam, that only takes an image about once per second. Now in one second, how far can an airline travelling 600mph go...600mph = 10 miles per minute. that is 52000 ft per minute = 866 feet per second. That is 1/6th of a mile in a second. Seems to me it might be real easy for that camera, taking one pic per second, to miss the plane entirely...

Based on my calculations the width across the frame at the distance of the airliner's trajectory in the video with the orange cones is about 250m. An airliner going 500MPH will almost cover this entire distance in 1 second (225 m/s). Given the frame rate of about 1fps you'd be lucky getting the airliner in more than one frame if it was crossing the ENTIRE width of the frame. AA77 wasn't - the wall of the pentagon is located 30m in from the right hand edge of frame.

The statistically probability of the camera capturing the airliner in a frame BEFORE it hit the building is roughly 1:8 (250m divided by 30m). Further more, high resolution or not, a high speed object appears in a slow-shutter frame as a blur.

Conclusion? If the Pentagon footage showed anything clearly recognisable as an airliner I would be screaming FAKE!

14. The aerodynamics of flight would have made the official trajectory – flying at high speed barely above ground level – physically impossible; and if it had come in at an angle instead, it would have created a massive crater; but there is no crater and the government has no way out

He is talking about Ground Effect. Some CTer essentially made a claim that Ground Effect meant flying an airliner close to the ground is impossible. This is actually nonsense, and I have read a debunk by a pilot somewhere, but am not sure where it is.

His "crater" argument is based on the logic that if an aircraft cannot approach at a flat trajectory due to ground effect, it must have come in at a steep angle, thus creating a large crater.

The crater is, of course, irrelevant, because an aircraft CAN approach at a flat trajectory.

15. If Flight 93 had come down as advertised, then there would have been a debris field of about a city block in size, but in fact the debris is distributed over an area of about eight square miles, which would be explainable if the plane had been shot down in the air but not if it had crashed as required by the government's official scenario. "

In addition to your own points:

PSA Flight 182 hit the ground intact, like UA93, and spread main debris over 4 city blocks. A 727 is slightly smaller than a 757.

For comparison, PA Flight 103 DID break up in midair over Lockerbie - the main debris field was 2,189 sq km. Other mid air break ups of airliners routinely distribute light debris over 100km from the crash site. 8km for a ground impact is a tiny area.

For clarity the only significant aircraft part found away from the impact site was a 1000lb section of turbine fan which was found about 300m downrange of the crater. All other debris found away from the crash was lightweight.

AND HERE IS THE GUY (BAIKEN, AKA RANDFREEDOM) REPLY:

1. Fallacy: Post Hoc... ...They will say, "I know what I saw. The planes hit the buildings, the buildings fell."

This is ironic. Fetz's Claim 1 was a strawman - because no one claims impact caused the collapse. This rebuttal to your rebuttal is ALSO a strawman because you didn't make the claim he says you did.

2. Fallacy: Burden of Proof. The burden of proof is placed on the wrong side. None of the four samples of core column steel from both WTC 1 and 2 in the fire-affected zones show temperature excursions exceeding 250 degrees.

This is legitimate. I would provide a source for maximum estimated temperature. I would also rebut this by pointing to where NIST indicate that they believe the fires were MUCH HOTTER in areas where they did not retrieve steel.

3. Fallacy: Straw Man. Fetzer's "point" was originally a refutation by Kevin Ryan (Underwriter's Laboratories) of a statement by Hyman Brown from the WTC construction crew.

My suggested ammendment will address this - demonstrating that Kevin Ryan was A) wrong and B) not in a position to make such statements immediately demolishes Fetzer's claim.

4. Fallacy: Appeal to Authority. Here the blogger simply does a hand-wave to his "links on the side," when in fact none of those who have tried to prove the case of progressive and complete collapse (without demolitions) have succeeded.

Again, my suggestions should address this. I would agree that saying "go read the reports" is a weak argument. It would be better to quote specific articles/reports that address the claim (for example the NYPD and FDNY reports of gradual building failure prior to global collapse). It means more work, but it makes your argument more airtight. Anyone can say "well some people said it happened like this".

5. Fallacy: Burden of Proof. Fetzer is correct that the kinetic energy of the collapse of a floor would be insufficient to sustain collapse.

My amendments address this.

When no steel high-rise in history has collapsed due to fire

This is false. I would direct you to the Kader Toy Factory Fire as probably the most striking example of 3 4 storey steel-structured buildings that suffered complete global collapse due to fires alone - the second building collapsed in 15 minutes. Other examples such as the total collapse of the steel portion in other fires also serves as an example. It is also worth pointing out the fallacy of their logic:
1) No steel building has ever collapsed due to fire before, so this steel building did not collapse due to fire

Same logic:

2) An airliner has never been flown into a skyscraper before, therefore an airliner did not fly into the skyscraper.

Or:

3) Before Apollo II landed on the moon man had never landed on the moon, therefore Apollo II did not land on the moon.

It is also worth point out that the buildings didn't collapse from fire. They collapsed from a combination of fires AND being hit with a fuel laden airliner travelling at 500 MPH.

No building had ever collapsed from this before because no building had ever experienced this event before.

6. Fallacy: Appeal to Ridicule.

Point 5 and 6 are the same. The "pulverization" is a strawman argument.

7. Fallacy: Red Herring. An irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. Obviously this blogger was searching for the referenced "Charles Pagelow" in order to mount some kind of personal attack, instead of addressing the very real point that steel-frame buildings simply cannot "pancake" due to the strength of the steel columns and the multiple lateral weldments.

Blah blah blah.

8. This not even a fallacy, it is a lie. "...times the collapse of one of the towers at between 20-30 seconds (9/11 eyewitness)." Reviewing 9/11 eyewitness, the collapse time of the south tower is definitely under 10 seconds

I like how they think a CD collapse can defy physics, but a fire collapse can't. Odd. This sort of garbage is nonsense. We have seen the videos, we have timed the collapses. The "free fall" claim is a strawman.

, whereas the north tower falls in under 14 seconds, with the "spire" hanging in space for another 10-15 seconds before slipping down into the dust cloud.

His "spire" is actually the core. The doco "Why the Towers Fell" (or "How the Towers Fell") addresses this.

9. This is another lie. The WTC towers were not like a tube. They had a core of graduated strength (like a tree). This core was over-built, even considering age at the time of collapse, by a factor of 6.

Well, stupid is as stupid does.

10. Blogger "The Artistic Macrophage" latches onto the word "metal" and tries to confuse the issue with the subject of aluminum. However, the temperature of the metal and its color when excavated from the WTC basement show it quite clearly to be molten steel.

It was steel. My amendments address this. He's incorrect in claiming it is molten - it's still a solid piece... but never mind. It is very very very hot.

The point being that the WTC fires were not sufficiently extensive nor hot enough to last five weeks, but multiple fires created from thermate reactions throughout the structure ARE.

This is typical disinfo. ONLY extensive fires can produce long lasting heat underground. A thermate reaction is rapid and quickly over. It is also very localised. The existence of underground fires is EVIDENCE of the intensity of the fires in the towers pre collapse.

11. In refutation, I think I must rest the case on the evidence. Larry Silverstein: "I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were going to be able to contain the fire, and I said, 'We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.' And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse."

1) "pull it" is not demolition jargon
2) Silverstein does not work in the demolitions industry, so does not use demolition jargon anyway
3) He was speaking to a fireman. Fireman also do not work in the demolitions industry, and do not use demolition jargon.

That would be akin to this scenario:

A golfer is talking to a ballroom dancer about doing the tango
Conclusion:
"doing" is military slang for killing, and "tango" is common Counter-terrorism jargon for a terrorist.
Therefore the golfer is talking about killing a terrorist.

WTC fell rapidly, in under 6.5 seconds, straight down, produced large clouds of dust, collapsed into a tidy pile, with the wall facia flopped on top rather than out to the sides.

WTC7 half fell on 30 West Broadway. I am sure the owner of 30 West Broadway would disagree with the assertation that WTC7 fell in "a tidy pile".

12. In every airline crash I've seen, there are the usual seats, luggage, trash, bodies, and recognizable airplane parts including wing tips and tail fin.

He simply hasn't looked at enough aircrashes. Most occur on take off or landing (or soon before/after) at low speed and altitude, with a relatively flat impact trajectory.

However the few high-speed and more vertical impact air crashes produce the same effects as UA93 - a big hole and a whole bunch of confetti.

14. Fetzer has an excellent argument here, which the blogger fails to discount. The only way to force a plane so close to the ground is at lower speeds, braking heavily. There is a compression wave of air that lifts the plane, vacuum above and compression below, and in approaching the ground it would have been forced up unless its downward angle of approach was greater. Interesting!

He simply doesn't understand ground effect (note neither him nor Fetzer actually names it? They probably don't know what it is actually called)

15. "The debris you speak of, covering 8 miles, refers to almost exclusively paper, and other materials that could have easily blown that far." Ha ha ha, that's amusing in itself except that in addition to the fact the debris was scattered along the flight path, there were human body parts:

*yawn*

Clearly, the plane was fragmenting in the sky as it fell.

The Flight Data Recorder says otherwise.

The first links to the NTSB report on the FDR. The second links to a summary of the vital stats from the FDR report, as provided by an aviation industry professional in a professional forum.

Like I said, long, but any comments or critique on my approach or his would be appreciated.

T.A.M.

Hope that helped.

-Andrew

 

[T.A.M.]

To Wolfshade and Gumboot....Thanks alot.

Your comments not only help in terms of some debating points, but more so they reassure me that I was, in fact, for the most part right in most of comments. I guess when you encounter a guy like this, who attacks yours skills in debating more so than the points you make, it can be off putting. I have never claimed to be a debater, it is far from my forte. I started this whole thing to try and make sure that the facts, according to the scientific principles I hold as true, were visible and explained to the general public, so they would get "both" sides of the argument.

If the vast majority of the fault in my post was in the "argumentation" or "Debate etiquette" form, than I am much relieved. I will leave the major debating of the issues to those who do it best. My job, to me, is to just put the info out there.

I would note though, that the first sentence in my post, was that it was a "brief" debunking. If I, or others, wanted to take the time and energy to do a "detailed" debunking of his points, i am sure the post would have been much stronger.

Once again guys, thanks...

T.A.M.

 

[brumsen]

As long as the editor agrees? We are the editors. I explained that to him.

I know. No problem there, then. But did Jones still think you were violating academic ethics when you had explained this to him? If so, on what basis?

The papers we write are serious, but calling it a journal is satirical. We decide what papers we want to write and post up. We were making the point that anyone can post something on the Internet and call it a journal. Jones has now proven this point for us.

Proven? No, he is just being consistent. I don't see the satire here, or perhaps I find it just not so funny.
The point should be that any journal, no matter how published, has to earn itself a reputation. Maybe JoD is not planning to do so? Again, hardly satire.

As for higher standards, we don't include such items as Internet rumors about non-existent anti-aircraft guns at the Pentagon for starters. We don't use the neo-Nazi American Free Press as a primary source. We don't use pictures of steel beams cut by steelworkers during the cleanup and claim it was done by thermite. Among other things.

The first two are remarks about sources, and I would tend to agree with you there. The latter is referring to a disagreement about what a certain picture shows. You claim to have the better argument there. So, obviously, do they.

 

[Darth Rotor]

Guys;
14. Fetzer has an excellent argument here, which the blogger fails to discount. The only way to force a plane so close to the ground is at lower speeds, braking heavily. There is a compression wave of air that lifts the plane, vacuum above and compression below, and in approaching the ground it would have been forced up unless its downward angle of approach was greater.

T.A.M.

Not a compression wave that "lifts" the plane. WTF is he talking about? Ground effect? This guy is full of it. "The only way to force the plane so close to the ground is at lower speeds, braking heavily?" What an idiot. You can crash at high speed, or at low speed. The vector sum of you vertical speeds in the z axis, vertically in negative values, tends to drive the problem.

The way to hit the ground while you still have lift is to fly at it, or to have a positive rate of descent up to the point of impact. 5 feet per minute, or 5000 feet per minute, so long as rate of descent is positive, you will hit the ground. At full power, descent is set with nose attitude. Push forward, descend faster, pull back, descend slower or start to ascend.

If you don't make a control input to break the rate of descent, you will, thanks to gravity always being in operation, hit the ground once you begin a descent. Gravity must be overcome by lift equal to or greater than Gross Wight to avoid impact with the ground.

As a pilot, I had plenty of experience with flying in ground effect, both in fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft. I have taught flight students how to use ground effect to their advantage in the landing environment.

http://avstop.com/AC/FlightTraingHandbook/GroundEffect.html

Note from the left figure that as airspeed increases, ground effect tends to merge into the lift line. (Due to reduced span wise flow, among other things) Notice how, at low angles of attack, in the right figure, the rough merging of the lift vector. No ground effect bonus at low angles of attack. In a descent at full power, you have a negative angle of attack due to lift generated by all that airspeed: L = K * (V^2)/2 (K = surface area, coefficient of lift, density of air, and V = Velocity of the free airstream aka Airspeed)

The key lift from ground effect is manifested at low, not high, airspeeds. The streamlining of vortices at higher speeds reduces the amount of turbulent air around the wings, which is a different condition than at low airspeed, high angle of attack. Spanwise flow is much reduced at high airspeeds.

At low speeds, ground effect reduces vortices under a wing and thus "increases available lift." What it is really doing is reducing subtractions from lift caused by turbulent air flow.

The effect on a plane that is already in a descent is to slightly arrest the rate of descent. If you are descending fast enough, ground effect won't help you. (Note how Navy Jets slam into an aircraft carrier. They don't flare, they fly through ground effect deliberately and slam into the landing zone at a deliberate rate of descent.)

If your Rate of Descent is roughly 3000-4000 feet per minute, which the FDR shows to be the case (from 4nm @ 2000 feet to 40 feet at impact point) Ground Effect does not act as a fluid trampoline. All it might do for a plane descending at those rates, if it does anything at all and I don't think it will, is ensure it does not hit the ground, but rather hits the building itself.

Only if the pilot had put in a significant back stick/nose up control input to a positive angle of attack would the added lift perhaps "assist" him in ballooning and missing the building.

If an aircraft is about level, with little to no rate of descent, ground effect can make for a ballooning if a positive pitch angle is applied to the airfoil, or it will extend the aircraft's glide as power is reduced, allowing the aircraft to settle through ground effect into a nice soft landing. Airline pilots do this all the time to "squeak" on a landing. Ground effect first manifests itself about one wingspan's distance from the ground, with its effects increasing in effectiveness as the plane approaches the ground. Again, you settle through it, as any pilot knows, to achieve a landing.

Flight 77 was not in the landing configuration, but at high speed.

After all that noise I just posted, his whole argument ignores the simple fact of how people fly to an intercept point.

As I noted in a post with John#### elsewhere, to set up a collision, you set up an intercept geometry that aligns you with your target, and you maintain a constant bearing, decreasing range relationship by correcting for changes in bearing with the yoke/stick. It is similar to how you line up and park your car in a narrow parking lot, albeit in three dimensions, or hit another car in a carnival "bumper cars" event.

If the sight picture remains fixed in your windscreen, you will hit it. If the object moves, up or down, left or right, or a combination of those, you will wither miss it, or you correct. If it moves down in the wind screen/forward canopy/window, you move the nose down. If it goes left, you turn a bit left. So long as you keep small corrections, and correct as soon as the slightest change in visual position on your windscreen (which boils down to a crude gun sight at this point, you will be able to fly to intercept. Since the pilot was apparently flying by hand, the auto pilot having been disengaged at about 7500 feet, he was in the visual, stick and rudder realm of flight. He was flying to a point on the ground, one of the most basic and simplest of tasks an inexperienced pilot first learns how to accomplish.

That he was going fast merely required that he set a very good glide slope early on in his attack run, and pay very close attention to his target. He didn't have to scan his airspeed and correct for it, he went to full throttle and by hand, and possibly trim controls, kept the control forces set while full throttle accelerated him. He had a single problem to solve, as a pilot, and that was the relative motion problem of staying on a glide slope to impact at a point.

Since he didn't need to flare, all he had to do was be descending fast enough and ground effect would barely have any effect on him when he reached the point of about a wingspan above the ground. Absent a nose up movement with the stick, the Rate of descent would not have time to abate much, a fraction of a second at his forward speed, to do anything but cause him to be a few feet higher than he aimed at most.

Use as much, or as little, of that as you like to stuff that assertion up his arse, sideways.

DR

 

[T.A.M.]

DR;

Thanks for the info. While most of it went over my non-aeronautical inclined head, I appreciate the effort. It is that kind of detail that I refer to with links, which he tried to nail me with "Appeal to authority". Well he is probably right, but as a non-authority, who else should I refer to...uncle bob the shoe salesman.

 

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

DR;

Thanks for the info. While most of it went over my non-aeronautical inclined head, I appreciate the effort. It is that kind of detail that I refer to with links, which he tried to nail me with "Appeal to authority". Well he is probably right, but as a non-authority, who else should I refer to...uncle bob the shoe salesman.

Keep in mind that "appeal to authority" does not mean "referring to an expert in the field". Classic example would be saying that "Dr. Jarvis (inventor of artificial heart) does not believe in the Big Bang Theory, therefore the Big Bang Theory is wrong". Whereas, saying "Dr. Jarvis feels that suggestion X is a bad idea to pursue for a new model artificial hear", would be okay.

 

[smother]

He is talking about Ground Effect. Some CTer essentially made a claim that Ground Effect meant flying an airliner close to the ground is impossible. This is actually nonsense, and I have read a debunk by a pilot somewhere, but am not sure where it is.

Probably Aerospaceweb.org:

www aerospaceweb org/question/conspiracy/q0274.shtml

(put dots in between the URL address)

[FONT=arial,helvetica]In addition, many modern airliners are not directly flown by the pilot but by automated systems. Most newer aircraft even use fly-by-wire (FBW) systems that take control inputs from the pilot, process them by computer, and automatically make adjustments to the control surfaces to accomplish the pilot's commands. Though the 757 is not equipped with a fully digital FBW system, it does carry a flight management computer system (FMCS), digital air data computer (DADC), and autopilot flight director system (AFDS) that provide sophisticated control laws to govern the plane's control surfaces. The AFDS not only controls the plane when the autopilot is enabled, but Boeing recommends that these computerized systems always be in operation to advise the pilots on how to best fly the aircraft. The primary advantage of computerized control systems is that they can make corrections to an aircraft's flight path and help prevent the pilot from accidentally putting the plane into an uncontrollable condition. The 757's flight augmentation system is also designed to damp out aerodynamic instabilities, and computerized control systems often automatically account for ground effect by making adjustments to the plane's control surfaces to cancel it out. [/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica]These factors make it clear that ground effect could not have prevented a Boeing 757 from striking the Pentagon in the way that Flight 77 did on September 11. Nevertheless, we are still left with the claim that the pilot Hanjour flew a suspiciously "perfect" flight path on his approach to the Pentagon despite his lack of skill. It is unclear what has prompted this belief since very few eyewitnesses even describe how well the aircraft flew. The majority instead focus on the impact and aftermath. Even so, those few who did make statements regarding pilot ability indicate that Hanjour flew in a somewhat erratic manner as one would expect.[/FONT]

[FONT=arial,helvetica]
[/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica]
[/FONT]

[FONT=arial,helvetica]This question of whether an amateur could have flown Flight 77 into the Pentagon was also posed to a colleague who previously worked on flight control software for Boeing airliners. Brian F. (he asked that his last name be withheld) explained, "The flight control system used on a 757 can certainly overcome any ground effect. ... That piece of software is intended to be used during low speed landings. A high speed dash at low altitude like [Flight 77] made at the Pentagon is definitely not recommended procedure ... and I don't think it's something anyone specifically designs into the software for any commercial aircraft I can think of. But the flight code is designed to be robust and keep the plane as safe as possible even in unexpected conditions like that. I'm sure the software could handle that kind of flight pattern so long as the pilot had at least basic flight training skills and didn't overcompensate too much." [/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica]Brian also consulted with a pair of commercial airline pilots who decided to try this kind of approach in a flight training simulator. Although the pilots were not sure the simulator models such scenarios with complete accuracy, they reported no significant difficulties in flying a 757 within an altitude of tens of feet at speeds between 350 and 550 mph (565 to 885 km/h) across smooth terrain. The only issue they encountered was constant warnings from the simulator about flying too fast and too low. These warnings were expected since the manufacturer does not recommend and FAA regulations prohibit flying a commercial aircraft the way Flight 77 was flown. These restrictions do not mean it is impossible for a plane to fly at those conditions but that it is extremely hazardous to do so, and safety was obviously not a concern to the terrorists on September 11. An aircraft flying at those high speeds at low altitude would also likely experience shaking due to the loads acting on it, but commercial aircraft are designed with at least a 50% safety margin to survive such extremes.[/FONT]

 

[T.A.M.]

Wolfshade;

so in essence, he was wrong in insiuating I was "Appealing to Authority". My referenced links were to experts in the field in question. They were references to Civil and Structural Engineer Papers on the very topics we were discussing.

 

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

Wolfshade;

so in essence, he was wrong in insiuating I was "Appealing to Authority". My referenced links were to experts in the field in question. They were references to Civil and Structural Engineer Papers on the very topics we were discussing.

Bingo.