Gage: Hell No I Ain't Reading Mackey's White Paper

[aggle-rithm]

Yes, and what a first time it was. Three separate buildings all on one day.

I know. A few months ago, I outgrew all my pants AT THE SAME TIME!!! What are the odds?!?

 

[Oystein]

...
If they want to bring 7 World Trade into the mix: First time a tall structure was impacted and set on fire by an even taller structure, first time the fire was not fought and left alone, and so on.

...
I can't help but feel that this tactic of treating buildings individually - as well as ignoring the truly relevant issues of the collapse - is deliberate. They've shown time and time again that they're willing to dive into details in order to build their arguments, plus they've been having this argument shoved at them for years now. If they're not hearing it, it's because they're choosing not to listen to it.

It's well what you write, but we should guard against special pleading:
While it is obviously true that individual buildings (no other building in the world had the same design as 7 WTC etc) behave individually, I would not say that, going into the morning of 9/11, people would have thought 7 would collapse from unfought fires. Before you go into detail, looking at statistics isn't an invalid method to come up with a first estimate for total collapse, and yes, everybody would have put that likelihood rather low, given the fact that steel framed highrises had not collapsed before in fires.
I think it is not true that these fires ever that went unfought, even though I have no counterexample at hand.
It is true that building codes aim to design building such that they don't collapse, even if firefighters can't get in.

Let's play numbers:

How many fires in steel framed highrises can we find before 9/11 that were in a league with building 7? Not many (less than 50), but more than 0. If none collapsed, then the probability for the total collapse of 7 is, say, 1% at most, given that statistics only.

However, as soon as we introduce other information, our probability shifts. For example, if we take out all firefighting, we are left with only a small handful of comparable fires, and I'd guess some of them showed partial collapses. So we can raise our probability for total collapse to 10%, maybe 20%.

Now introduce 7's unusually long floor spans, and the fact that the risk of thermal expansion therof causing truss seats to walk off wasn't recognized by building codes: There is an additional risk factor, and probability rises again - 20-40%? Whatever.

Let's leave it there. Let's say the probability, given the statistics, the FD response and one individual risk factor, is below 50%, but not tiny.
Now we observe collapse.
Is that suspicious?
Not at all.
Things with a low, but non-zero probability happen all the time. I am sure other buildings have not collapsed before that were doomed given the statistics and circumstances.



One mistake is to conflate building 7 with the twin towers. There is indeed no statistics at all to compare them with. Here, we do indeed have significant firsts, and no-one can deny that. We could not have given a first estimate of probabilities from experience. No way.

 

[Sam.I.Am]

I know. A few months ago, I outgrew all my pants AT THE SAME TIME!!! What are the odds?!?

You sound fat...

 

[ElMondoHummus]

It's well what you write, but we should guard against special pleading:

Sure, but in turn let's be careful about taking my argument where I wasn't intending to go with it. As I understand it, special pleading is the attempted inclusion of irrelevant considerations in order to claim a a specific case's exemption from a broader line of logic. Providing that's your definition as well, I'd argue that I wasn't heading in that direction at all. Rather, I'd argue I was referring to pertinent and central issues. And that I also was agreeing with Grizzly Bear that more fundamental considerations - such as design - form an important part of the analyses of the WTC collapses.

I was specifically including the jetliner impacts not as some sort of escape clause to invalidate alternate analyses, but rather because the result of the impacts - the severing of columns and the displacement of other structural elements - was identified as being one of the major contributing factors to the collapse. I was also specifically including the design of the towers because it was identified by Astaneh-Asl to have been contributory as well (and I also get that in a very strong way from other posters here, Architect being the main one). To me, those aren't special pleadings; they're central characteristics.

If that's not your definition, then whoops ! We need to take a step backwards from here and hash that out.

While it is obviously true that individual buildings (no other building in the world had the same design as 7 WTC etc) behave individually, I would not say that, going into the morning of 9/11, people would have thought 7 would collapse from unfought fires. Before you go into detail, looking at statistics isn't an invalid method to come up with a first estimate for total collapse, and yes, everybody would have put that likelihood rather low, given the fact that steel framed highrises had not collapsed before in fires.

As a first order analysis, yes, that's not unreasonable to talk in those broad terms at all. It's not unreasonable to say that there's a subset of logically sound, non-conspiratorial people who would not have guessed that WTC 7 would collapse (or indeed, any of the towers). Hell, many of us were surprised at the collapses, that's for sure. But, in my post, I was talking from the perspective of what we know today, and that accumulated knowledge does specify what the relevant issues were behind the buildings collapses. So just to be clear, I wasn't talking from a perspective of using initial, first order logic; I was talking from a position that includes having the NIST report, and all other statements, evidence, and published knowledge on the topic.

I think it is not true that these fires ever that went unfought, even though I have no counterexample at hand.

I don't know what I was thinking there because I screwed up; I posted that far too quickly. I think I was conflating first time events with reasons the building collapsed (and building 7 did indeed collapse because they didn't fight the fire) and just went stream of consciousness for that sentence. I don't have any true counterexamples either, but at least one of the prior mentioned buildings come close enough to be a partial one:

In the One Meridian Plaza fire, they ended up having initial problems due to water supply, and later on that night after losing three firemen (killed, unfortunately), they actually suspended operations and let the fire burn (Source). Now, that's not quite the same thing as what happened at WTC 7 - the Philly fire departments did start fighting it, and there were 11 hours of "operations" before they made the call to stop. On top of that, outside (where apparently they had better water pressure), they kept streams going from the outside into wherever they could (my guess is that they were trying to contain things so that there was no spread to other buildings, but I'll defer to Lefty, Tri, and others on that). But if I'm understanding the report correctly, they were having trouble making the interior efforts effective:

The limited water supply prevented significant progress in fighting the fire and limited interior forces to operating from defensive positions in the stairwells. During the next hour the fire spread to the 23rd and 24th floors primarily through autoexposure, while firefighters were unable to make entry onto these floors due to deteriorating heat and smoke conditions and the lack of water pressure in their hoselines.

So while this wasn't a case of not fighting the fire at all, as a practical matter it appears as though they had little to no effect on its interior spread (again, Tri, Lefty, others can chime in here and correct me if I'm wrong). That's close to being the same as not having fought things to begin with. Just for the sake of fairness, I'll cop to this as being something that comes so close it's good enough to refute my carelessly posted point.

One mistake is to conflate building 7 with the twin towers. There is indeed no statistics at all to compare them with. Here, we do indeed have significant firsts, and no-one can deny that. We could not have given a first estimate of probabilities from experience. No way.

Yeah, that's true. It's also another reason to go to the point that Grizzly was getting at: Study more fundamental characteristics and make judgements from those. There is no honestly decent logic applicable to the situation when it's stated the way truthers state it (3 buildings on one day, yadda yadda). But when studied from first principles developed through study of previous cases, as well as practical experiments like the Cardington Tests, you can make better analyses because you'd be studying structural response, rather than broad-stroke, total-buildings events.

Does that make sense?

 

[Seymour Butz]

I would not say that, going into the morning of 9/11, people would have thought 7 would collapse from unfought fires.

It would be interesting if after 7's collapse, if OTHER buildings with long span assymetrical flooring with similar shortcomings have been examined in ANSYS, etc, to see if they would collapse due to thermal expansion.

 

[Mr.Herbert]

This guy lost:

1. His Job

2. His Girlfriend

3. His apartment

All in the same day!

 

[000063]

http://www.haifire.com/Resources/presentations/Historical_Collapse_Survey.pdf

Um, yes, the "dominant fire and collapse events" of the survey. Have you thought about why that might be? Because no other steel-framed highrises have ever experienced complete collapse from fire.

Neither did the WTC. 1 and 2 were hit by an airplane each, and 7 had some debris damage and a largely unfought fire. Also, I hope you're not asserting that something unprecedented is impossible.

Yes, and what a first time it was. Three separate buildings all on one day.

You are, aren't you? That's exactly what you're asserting.

One building. WTC 7. And even then that was only mostly fire.

 

[ergo]

First time in history cannard... wowsers..

that means nuclear weapons don't exist... first time in history and all

Rockets and going to outer space don't exist... first time in history and all...

amazing.

This is why we don't need to worry about JREF 9/11 "debunking". This should be stundied but the asinine things that get put into those threads kinda muddy the waters. Maybe some of these remarkable feats of logic should be put into some of the science, math or philosophy forums. See how they fare there.

 

[Oystein]

...
Yeah, that's true. It's also another reason to go to the point that Grizzly was getting at: Study more fundamental characteristics and make judgements from those. There is no honestly decent logic applicable to the situation when it's stated the way truthers state it (3 buildings on one day, yadda yadda). But when studied from first principles developed through study of previous cases, as well as practical experiments like the Cardington Tests, you can make better analyses because you'd be studying structural response, rather than broad-stroke, total-buildings events.

Does that make sense?

Yep, makes sense, and the rest of your post, too. Yes, it matters tons if we'rte looking at things ex ante or ex post. Truthers want to have it both ways: True, ex ante, the probability of 7 collapsing completely would have appeared low, but we are in 2011 now, several reports and real papers later, and that opinion is so 2001. At the end of the day, ex post matters. "Three in one day" was a badly formed meme from the start. Apples and oranges.

 

[ozeco41]

It would be interesting if after 7's collapse, if OTHER buildings with long span assymetrical flooring with similar shortcomings have been examined in ANSYS, etc, to see if they would collapse due to thermal expansion.

Don't forget the unfought fires.

Well up on any owners priority list for such a building would be re-assessment of the adequacy of fire protection measures and any vulnerabilities.

I doubt that you would even need "ANSYS, etc" to recognise structural issues analogous to the WTC7 column 79 vulnerability - given 100% hindsight of the 9/11 events. A structural engineer doing a "What if" examination of the plans could probably identify potential risks...

...for a massive unfought fire allowed to rage for many hours.

And, if you are going to allow for that situation why are you worried about collapse?

The building would most likely be non-recoverable anyway.

 

[Oystein]

...
...for a massive unfought fire allowed to rage for many hours.

And, if you are going to allow for that situation why are you worried about collapse?

The building would most likely be non-recoverable anyway.

Maybe you want to know how fast collapse will ensue, relative to the time needed for full evacuation of the building. And maybe you want to inform your local FD about the additional risks of going inside.

 

[ozeco41]

Maybe you want to know how fast collapse will ensue, relative to the time needed for full evacuation of the building. And maybe you want to inform your local FD about the additional risks of going inside.

I'm not sure about the first bit - the sort of fire needed to bring the building into risk would be far longer than evacuation time.

Agreed on the warning to the firies on the risk you detect but even then don't forget that the decision to allow a specific fire to rage unfought would be made by the Fire Chief at the time.

As the manager or the managers advising engineer you make the policy choices about risk but if the fire eventuates the control is out of your hands.

 

[Grizzly Bear]

I'm not sure about the first bit - the sort of fire needed to bring the building into risk would be far longer than evacuation time.

I suspect a lot of that would deal with code enforcement issues than anything else anyway. Most properly designed buildings will stay up as long as the fires are put out and the protection is properly installed even if the property is a complete loss afterwards. The other matter would be path of egress for emergency exits, as that was big discussion point I recall for the WTC.

As far as I know it did comply with code at the time it was completed, and many of the code investigations dealt with revisions in hindsight of what the investigations revealed. Just my 0.02

 

[MikeW]

Just bumping this as it seemed to be the appropriate place to add a note...

Gage, Griffin etc may be hoping that Ryan's work will just disappear, never to be heard of again, but that now seems even less unlikely. Because in The Eleventh Day, the latest book by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, he's quoted several times in a chapter that pours much scorn over controlled demolition and other truther theories. As they summarise here:

"The approach of Professor Griffin, the conspiracy author who presents himself as reasoned and judicious, in Mackey's view "violates every single tenet" of the baloney detection kit. Mackey demonstrates as much, successfully in our view, over some three hundred pages."

And several quotes follow (check pages 104, 106-108 if you find a copy).

Still, never mind. Summers has written a book on how he believes Oswald didn't kill Kennedy and the truth was covered up, but I'm sure truthers will now have no trouble in explaining away why he says things like he's not seen "a jot of evidence that anything like a false flag scenario on 9/11".

 

[RKOwens4]

Well, until he does, that's why he deserves No New Investigation.

The claim that I haven't responded to Jim Hoffman's silly response is complete nonsense. That response is in the version 2.1 edition of the whitepaper itself, and has been for something like three years now.

This also is an iron-clad example of a broken promise from him.

It's not hard to read.

ETA: For sake of completeness, v. 2.1 of my whitepaper, including response to Jim Hoffman, was completed on 24 May 2008. I'm unaware of any substantial criticism of it since then, hence there is no v. 2.2. There is also this thread here at the JREF discussing Hoffman's complaints more or less as they appeared. So, over three years ago.

Ya might want to actually read it, Mr. Gage.

I have zero doubt in my mind that Richard Gage knows that what he originally believed to be true concerning 9/11, has turned out not to be true. However, for him it's not as easy as just admitting that he was wrong and the collapse of the World Trade Center was not a controlled demolition. He is the man in charge of a large organization with many staffers who, even if not all of them are paid, depend on the organization continuing to exist. He's also received thousands of dollars (perhaps tens of thousands) through donations. If he admitted he was wrong the whole time then it would be admitting that all of that money was for nothing (which no doubt would piss off his donars). On top of that, he has his ENTIRE reputation invested in these theories and he has many people (truthers) who actually do look up to him and offer a boost to his ego. If he admitted he was wrong, it would be admitting that the last several years of his life were wasted and he'd have no more support from his followers.

Richard Gage, although dishonest and deceitful, does seem like he's mentally sane (as opposed to say Judy Wood or Jim Fetzer). He HAS to know that these claims have been thoroughly, THOROUGHLY disproven, and that they were disproven years ago. But I think he'd rather keep peddling the lies and living in the fantasy world than his only other alternative, which would horrify anyone in that position. It's really sad, but he only has himself to blame for putting himself in his position.

 

[Oystein]

I have zero doubt in my mind that Richard Gage knows that what he originally believed to be true concerning 9/11, has turned out not to be true.

I tend to believe that, too.

However, for him it's not as easy as just admitting that he was wrong and the collapse of the World Trade Center was not a controlled demolition. He is the man in charge of a large organization with many staffers

No.
AE911T is not much of an organisation. The 1500+ A&E, and 10,000+ "supporters", are merely people who once filled out a form on teh interwebz. The staffers are around 10 people.

who, even if not all of them are paid, depend on the organization continuing to exist.

In what way do they depend on the organization? And even if they depend on the organization, do the depend on Gage? I don't see how.
Only 3 staffers, other than Gage himself, were paid in 2009, and they got less than US$ 10,000 each.
The only one who depends on the organisation and the salaries it pays is Gage, who gets a nice full time professional salary of 75K (in 2009; numbers for 2010 not available yet)

He's also received thousands of dollars (perhaps tens of thousands) through donations.

More: "Gifts, grants, contributions and membership fees" were
2007: US$ 3,353
2008: US$ 57,767
2009: US$ 184,386
Total through 2009: US$ 245,506
(It shall be interesting to see if the upward trend held in 2010)

If he admitted he was wrong the whole time then it would be admitting that all of that money was for nothing (which no doubt would piss off his donars).

The donors would mainly have themselves to blame. It is not awfully hard to find out the lies.

On top of that, he has his ENTIRE reputation invested in these theories and he has many people (truthers) who actually do look up to him and offer a boost to his ego. If he admitted he was wrong, it would be admitting that the last several years of his life were wasted and he'd have no more support from his followers.

It seems he even threw away his marriage and his career as an architects for woo.

Richard Gage, although dishonest and deceitful, does seem like he's mentally sane (as opposed to say Judy Wood or Jim Fetzer). He HAS to know that these claims have been thoroughly, THOROUGHLY disproven, and that they were disproven years ago. But I think he'd rather keep peddling the lies and living in the fantasy world than his only other alternative, which would horrify anyone in that position. It's really sad, but he only has himself to blame for putting himself in his position.

Amen.

 

[aggle-rithm]

Only 3 staffers, other than Gage himself, were paid in 2009, and they got less than US$ 10,000 each.

I'm sure their mothers are always saying, "When are you going to get a real job and move out of my basement?"

And perhaps, "They're hiring at Taco Bell!"

 

[dc1971]

This is why we don't need to worry about JREF 9/11 "debunking". This should be stundied but the asinine things that get put into those threads kinda muddy the waters. Maybe some of these remarkable feats of logic should be put into some of the science, math or philosophy forums. See how they fare there.

Someone needs a hug!

 

[RKOwens4]

In what way do they depend on the organization? And even if they depend on the organization, do the depend on Gage? I don't see how.

I just meant that AE911Truth is their special "club". Like a band or a soccer team or volunteer animal shelter. If the band leader called it quits, that would probably be it for the band. I mean Richard Gage is the founder and leader of AE911Truth. If he decided to shut it down, I'm sure he is the only one with the legal power to do that, forcing his staffers to either form their own group or, ahem, get a life.

Only 3 staffers, other than Gage himself, were paid in 2009, and they got less than US$ 10,000 each.
The only one who depends on the organisation and the salaries it pays is Gage, who gets a nice full time professional salary of 75K (in 2009; numbers for 2010 not available yet)

Whaaaaaat??? Gage received $75,000 in salary from AE911Truth??? Wow, that changes everything. I'd always thought AE911Truth was a non-profit only interested in spreading "the truth", and that if Gage made any money at all then it was sorta on the side, like DVD and t-shirt sales from their website. If he is actually collecting a salary (and a whopping one at that), then he's an even bigger douchebag than I'd thought and that right there is the number one reason why he doesn't just admit he was wrong and shut down.

More: "Gifts, grants, contributions and membership fees" were
2007: US$ 3,353
2008: US$ 57,767
2009: US$ 184,386
Total through 2009: US$ 245,506
(It shall be interesting to see if the upward trend held in 2010)

Unbelievable. When I wrote my last message, I was thinking that I'd be really surprised if they collected tens of thousands of dollars in donations. But, close to a quarter of a million? Geez.

 

[beachnut]

I ...

Whaaaaaat??? Gage received $75,000 in salary from AE911Truth??? Wow, that changes everything. I'd always thought AE911Truth was a non-profit only interested in spreading "the truth", and that if Gage made any money at all then it was sorta on the side, like DVD and t-shirt sales from their website. If he is actually collecting a salary (and a whopping one at that), then he's an even bigger douchebag than I'd thought and that right there is the number one reason why he doesn't just admit he was wrong and shut down.





Unbelievable. When I wrote my last message, I was thinking that I'd be really surprised if they collected tens of thousands of dollars in donations. But, close to a quarter of a million? Geez.

They took in over 200k one year. I assume it is like a business. Gage takes out, most likely a sum of money ( assume he is married for taxes) to be in the 15 percent bracket after deductions. And I assume he and his staff travel on organizational funds. It is a big vacation, and Gage is the boss, all he has to do is repeat the lies he plagiarized from 911 truth (kind of free for all) and ask for money to fight against the evildoers. And a few fringe nuts fund his travel club.

Gage would have to a moron to believe what he preaches; or he is smart, taking money from those who have not figure out he is a liar on 911, a do nothing hot air machine. What will A&E morph into? How do you keep up the scam. When the 2010 numbers are in, will he show growth, or is the end near?

Since he traveled to Europe this summer, I assume he took in more than 200k last year, like the year before.