Brief commnents on Adam's arguments about NT, in the order he brings them up:
1. "It would therefore not be log ical to assert that by 2001, four years later, they would be unable to utilize the material in demolition ... so Mohr’s point would seem to be insignificant"
-> I agree. From the assertion that by 2001, research into nanothermitic formulations may only have been in very early stages only does not follow logically that there cannot have been NT in WTC dust. It's an insignificant argument.
2. On the issue IF NTs can be "explosive", and if yes, how "explosive", or how "powerful", Adam follows Steven Jones' suggestions to simply not bother with definitions of "high" or "low" explosives etc.
-> This is of course an easy sneak out. If CTers claim that NT was used as an explosive to demolish a steel structure, they MUST explain how exactly NT does it, and that explanation must take care of issues such as brisance of the charges, and which other properties of an explosive are needed to actually break steel
explosibely. It is a necessary part of their proof of CD by NT!
3. About ATM Fig. 29 and a comparison of Harrit's DSC traces with Tillotson'w where Chris pointed out that the curves don't match, Adam focuses on this: "[Harrit e.al.] actually pointed out that both of the samples “show completion of reaction at temperatures below 560 °C.”"
Evasion. The curves still don't match; shape, location of peaks etc. differ. Adam must explain why only one common feature of the curves is significant, and all the differences are not.
Also, everybody know that most NT-truthers, including authors of ATM thelselves, keep pointing out how their reaction happened / started at 425 °C or thereabouts - never any mention of the 560 °C figure.
4. "Mohr also argues that because the heat output of the four samples is low in comparison to other substances"
Does Mohr?? The heat output of
thermite is low in comparison to other substances, and, more significantly, in comparison to the four samples! Or, conversely, the heat output of the four samples is HIGH in comparison to thermite.
5. Into the same paragraph as 4. Adam mixes in a separate argument: " [Mohr:] “Harrit’s samples had some carbon based material in them that simply burned in the surrounding air, and that was not a thermite reaction.” However, Niels Harrit disagrees with this assertion, noting that when the chips were ignited, “elemental iron was formed, clearly indicating a thermitic reaction.”"
-> Adam misses the fact that even Harrit the ATM paper itself pointed out that Harrit’s samples had some carbon based material in them that simply burned in the surrounding air! So Harrit disagrees with Harrit?
6. Indeed, the formation of molten iron and iron spheres is a very strong indication that these chips are some sort of thermite. ...the spheres are very important in determining if the chips are thermitic, as noted by the ATM
authors."
The authors never provided any reasons why existence of spheres are "very important" there - they never provided any reference that this is how NT experts identify NT. Fact is: They don't. The proof that a certain reaction was a thermite reaction would be to find in the residue both elemental iron (which they arguably did not) and aluminum oxide (which they most definitely did not at all). The references the ATM authors provide in their paper are quite clear on this: Even if you know for a certain fact that your reactive mix is made of 90% nanothermite, and they burn it, they look for Al-oxide in the residue to prove it was actually the thermite reacion. No one looks for spheres! Spheres with iron are a ubiquous byproduct of many combustion events and not at all specific for thermite.
7. "Mohr brings up at 1:54 is that if unignited thermite was found in the dust, the triggering devices used should also have been found as well. However, we previously discussed that the devices could very well have been made to be very small and disguised so as not to be found in the debris."
-> I agree with Adam here: Not finding such devices is not proof of their absence.
8. "Mohr does not provide an adequate explanation as to why using the PXRD method would have produced more accurate results"
-> That's because Tillotson and Gash, in a paper referenced and used by Harrit et al, that's what they do. Harrit et al use the DSC chart provided by Tillotson and Gash and pretend the chart is indicative of the thermite reaction - but it is not: Tillotson and Gash don't conclude "thermite reaction took place" from the DSC, they conclude it from the subsequent PXRD testing.
9. "as explained by Gregg Roberts:
We ran the test the way we did because the literature described a previous test of nanothermite that was run in an ordinary atmosphere. If we had run it in an inert atmosphere, we would not have been able to compare apples to apples in terms of the energy released"
Roberts and Taylor are in error. It's actually the other way round: The DSC trace by Tillotson and Gash that Harrit et al compare theirs to was done under inert gas. It had to: Both the Tillotson and Gash probe and the Harrit chips had significant organic matrix which will react under air and spoil results. T&G had ca. 10%, ATM had much more organics. Doing DSC under air is stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid.
10. "we have already established that aluminum oxide would not be expected to be found due to its dispersal in the air."
-> What?? Where? The NT cultists have only asserted this without evidence to weasel their way out of a very uncomfortable position. Tillotson and Gash of course found Al oxide in their residue, easily! It doesn't just disperse into air in a competently done experiment!
11. Adam then tries a convoluted second argument for why there
should be no Al-oxide in the residue, and he quotes Harrit. Harrit himself is obviously confused, or making stuff up. Here's the catch:
Harrit: "
So we cannot see, determine if there are fluorine in there or not. Now, the presence of fluorine is interesting, because "
-> What? "We can not determine the presence of F, but we know it's there"? Is Harrit using magick here??
I say: Wishful thinking. If they claim there is F, they should prove it! They never did! Isn't Harrit a chemist?
12. "As for Mohr’s claim that barium nitrate should have been found..."
-> I agree with Adam that this claim is uncertain, and I am sure Chris agrees by now, too.
13. A longer discussion of Mohr saying something like "since all chemical elements were somewhere in the towers, their coincidence could be coincidence", Adam quotes Jim Hofmann: "Although these elements - aluminum, iron, oxygen, and silicon - were all abundant in building materials used in the Twin Towers, it is not possible that such materials milled themselves into fine powder and assembled themselves into a chemically optimized aluminothermic composite as a by-product of the destruction of the Twin Towers"
-> I agree with Hofmann and Taylor. The red-gray chips are not a chance assembly of dustcomponents, they are rather a man-made stuff:
Paint on steel.
14. "The composition of the WTC paint and the red/gray chips are extremely different."
-> WRONG. The composition of chips a-d matches the paint specified for LaClede steel company to be painted on WTC floor trusses almost perfectly, and the MEK-soaked chip has a composition very similar to the Tnemec Red 99 paint that Steven Jones himself analysed from a paint sample from a WTC exterior steel column.
15. "The WTC paint was found to be stable beyond temperatures of 800
°C, whereas the chips ignite at temperatures below 500 °C"
-> Wrong in three ways:
First, the assumption that all WTC paint was the same and had the same properties is obviously false: Adam Taylor should already know that there were at least 2 different primers painted on WTC steels. Only the Tnemec paint on the exterior columns is known to behave as described.
Secondly, we already know that the chips that most of the chips that Harrit et al present in their paper wasn't tnemec; much of it was most likely LaClede paint, which isn't expected to be stable the way Tnemec paint is
Thirdly, "paint was found to be stable beyond temperatures of 800
°C" does not necessary mean that it didn't react - that the organic matrix didn't oxidize. It merely means that there remained some matrix, so the red pigment wouldn't readily spall off. In fact, it is virtually certain that Tnemec would react well below 800 °C, given that it contains linseed oil in its organic vehicle.
16. "The chips did not dissolve in a MEK paint solvent."
-> a) So what? Why is this significant?
b) Adam should know already that the chip they could not dissolve in MEK was chemically different from other chips in their paper. Also, does he know how Tnemec paint or LaCLede paint would react to MEK? I am certain that LaClede would not dissolve, as it is an epoxy-based paint.
17. "[Mohr] cites two reasons why he feels the validity of the journal is questionable: that a hoax paper was accepted by Bentham and that the journal’s editor resigned in protest after the ATM paper was published. Both of these points, however, are totally insignificant."
-> I agree with Adam that these points are insignificant. It suffices to show that the paper's conclusions are simply wrong (do not follow from, and in fact are contradicted by, the paper's data).
Midnight. Time to finish my beer and hug the pillows.
). Any debate with him or anyone else on JREF doesn't interest me. Given that it's JREF we're talking about, I'm sure I'd never get the last word in no matter what. Addressing every single point of their's would probably require another 230 pages from me, and nowadays I'm not involved in nearly as much 9/11-related business as I have been in the past. I released my paper since I didn't want my work to go to waste, and it's free for anyone to read and come to their own conclusions.
