My claim was/is "impact damage plus unfought fires caused the collapses". I have sufficient elements of evidence to support that claim. I am not constrained to limit my sources of evidence to your narrow group of selected bits of visual evidence. I am not constrained to accept everything that R Mackey OR NIST or any other authority puts forward.
Can you show your evidence and allow it to be examined by others?
I am trying to show how people regularly confuse belief with verifiable evidence.
Do you really have sufficient evidence to support your claim or is it rooted in deep-seated belief?
(There is one way to check which dates back thousands of years and is at the root of the "scientific method". Can you show me your evidence so it can be openly cross-examined?)
Let me answer this before it looks like I am avoiding the challenge.
My need for evidencce relates directly to my purpose in pursuing understanding of the WTC collapses of 9/11.
My purpose has been to be able to explain to interested persons including genuine sceptics why the towers collapsed. Specifically why the Twin Towers collapsed, WTC 7 is a different situation and I will touch on it later. In order to explain to lay persons I needed to satisfy myself as to the mechanism involved in the collapses and why there was no demolition. I am trained in civil/structural engineering and also military engineering with some demolition experience but not a high rise building specialist.
The process of explanation that I prefer is to work from the main elements of the "big picture" and pursue down into the details wherever the person I am discussing with needs to pursue more detail. The people I am talking to are rarely seeped in the mythology of conspiracy theory or those who are now referred to as "truthers". The situation is slightly different when the discussions are on an Internet forum and those joining the discussion include conspiracy theorists or truthers who are already well indoctrinated in the standard pro-CD issues. Most of my early discussions on the Internet occurred on the now defunct Richard Dawkins Forum where I was the leading "debunker side" technical poster (And sub forum moderator which led to some conflict of interest issues
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So I would start an explanation from the big picture which is simple. For each of the Twin Towers an aircraft flew into the towers, caused initial damage, started fires but initially the tower stood. Accumulating damage due to fires (and potentially some human assistance) weakened the impact and fire zone such that the top part of the tower fell and caused a rapid progressive collapse with total destruction resulting.
So much for the big picture. The evidence for it is readily available but most interested people take that big picture as given. The one question usually being "what about demolition".
From there the discussions would go further into such details as my discussion partner needed to clarify. I tried to avoid adversarial interactions if possible - not always succeeding.
So there is no easy answer to your request "Can you show your evidence and allow it to be examined by others?"
Of course I can BUT it is discussion specific. I made sure that my explanations could be backed by sound engineering forensic logic and to do that I would make sure that every element of "proof" of the mechanism of why the towers collapsed was there. So there would be from a few to dozens to potentially hundreds of different points. And I am not going to attempt to reproduce either a summary OR a comprehensive list of all the "evidence" I have called on. However that evidence was always available to the person I was in discussion with and that is where the evidence is relevant. I am not writing academic papers - different setting - different requirements.
Where my call to evidence differs from yours is that I see the visual record as merely part of the total available evidence.
Let me give one specific example. In considering the initial collapse ("collapse initiation") for the twin towers people would often lack an understanding of the damage that removal of (say) 25% of columns does to a building. There was often a presumption out there in trutherland that cutting 25% of columns would cause a 25% reduction in load carrying with the unsupported 25% being linearly uniformly redistributed to the remaining columns. As you would be aware that is far from the truth. So I would need to teach some basic engineering as part of the explanation - I have done many "text graphics" diagrams to show what can happen.
Now I regard the facts of basic engineering as evidence. In a court of law they would fall under the evidence available from an "expert witness".
That is merely one issue used as an example. I am aware of your tendency to call aspects of mechanism which occur out of sight "speculation" which carries pejorative overtones. I do not accept the all "out of sight" bits of mechanism are mere speculation. for example I have stated on many occasions that "once the top block started to fall the ends of the columns in the top block were bypassing the end of their other part in the lower tower." Should be obvious why that is true but look at the lack of clarity in "Missing Jolt" type papers over that single issue.
So I'm not listing even in summary all the evidence.
My own position for which I am confident that there is evidence:
For the Twin Towers - two critical stages - initial collapse where I can identify possible contributory mechanisms to the weakening of the impact and fire zone. I cannot "prove" that there were sufficient of those weakenings to cause the collapse without demolition assistance BUT the logistic and security aspects clearly say "no demolition". I am aware that NIST has given an explanation which is "perimeter led". For historic reasons of my involvement in Internet discussions I have never relied on NIST arguments - merely drawn on some of their material as evidence sources. Perimeter or core led is not of significance to me. It will remain insignificant until the unlikely event some one produces a substantial argument that changes the "big picture". i.e. validly raises the question of demolition - which is not a probable occurrence. For collapse progression - the cascading/pancaking down the open office space involved overwhelming impact loads. Sufficient to "prove" no CD required. The "peel off" of outer perimeter and "strip down" of core followed as natural consequences. All readily explainable with minimum evidence needed.
For WTC 7 I am content to accept that NIST has given a plausible explanation of the collapse of the interior followed by fall of the facades. Whether NIST is 100% correct matters little to me.
If you wanted me to produce more evidence we would need to go through a process of me explaining to you and producing evidence at each step where it was needed.
