Debunk Alert: New Ryan/Jones Article in Peer Reviewed Journal

[Pardalis]

180,000ppb is a massive amount of benzene to be suddenly released

Yeah, did you notice those two towers collapse?

And Mangoose, rather than taking a single line and parsing it to your heart's content, perhaps you might try to address the salient points of the paper.

He revealed a major flaw with his sourcing method, good thing Mangoose took the time to look, I'm sure you would never have picked up on it yourself.

This is how falsehoods snowball.

 

[Pardalis]

Any bets on how RedIbis is going to spin this around and ignore?

Mostly it's questioning the sources for the paper. I don't see where s/he proposes what caused the spikes in VOCs at levels thousands of times greater than what has been recorded for normal office bldg fires with large amounts of plastics.

 

[Dave Rogers]

And regarding the last point, how does Mr. Ryan's hypothesis account for the greatest spike occuring long afterward? Surely there's no huge stockpile of nanononsense detonating after it was removed? How does that work??

This seems to be a classic truther error. If a hypothesis fails to fit the data perfectly, any hypothesis proposed to replace it should fit the data better, not worse. None of them seem to get that point.

Dave

 

[Pardalis]

ETA: Upon further review the greatest spikes of benzene took place in February 02 at 610,000ppb.

How do you think this fits in your theory about thermate and CD?

 

[WildCat]

You mean the conflagration MIT's Eagar said was "not unusual." You mean the conflagration hundreds of firefighters went up into the buildings, one of them, a chief saying, "two small pockets... two lines to take it down..." The fires were not that large,

I'm glad you outed yourself as a liar right off the bat, so we know what kind of person we're dealing with.

 

[Pardalis]

I'm glad you outed yourself as a liar right off the bat, so we know what kind of person we're dealing with.

Maybe like Jones with his "white dust cloud" fiasco, he didn't bother yo verify his sources. That major problem doesn't seem to bother him for some reason.

Let's give him the benefit of the doubt for now.

 

[beachnut]

This paper assumes there is much plastic, polyvinyl chloride, computer housings, office materials in the rubble. It is the release of particulate matter, and the documentation that shows typical release patterns of PM in large structural fires, as well as the concentrations of specific compounds that EPA and Cahill reported, that are not adequately explained by what is known about large structural fires.

NIST comments on the white clouds as “An unusual flame is visible within this fire. In the upper photograph {Fig 9-44} a very bright flame, as opposed to the typical yellow or orange surrounding flames, which is generating a plume of white smoke, stands out." Source: NCSTAR 1-5A Chapter 9 Appendix C NIST Fig. 9-44. p. 344



Thermate burns with a very bright flame and gives off a plume of white smoke consisting of aluminum oxide, which is consistent with the flame and white plume NIST comments on.

82 micrograms/m3 = ~26 ppb at 20 degrees C

180,000ppb is a massive amount of benzene to be suddenly released, as are daily averages of 18,000 ppb. It warrants investigation. Especially in light of the EPA’s failure to warn workers and others of the environmental dangers to working in the area at the time, and in light of the sicknesses and deaths that are occurring in first responders.

Bright flame? Could be a lot of things burning bright. Not thermite, cause zero thermite was found, where have you been for over 6 years? It could be this, some extra O2;

Thermite, you mention thermite and I know from the get go, you are pure fantasy on 9/11 and your ability to understand 9/11 is hampered by unknown things. What are they, why are 9/11 truthers so illogical and evidence free?

Benzene is found in fires. One grab sample makes an giant investigation, when they know where the benzene came from. What a joke, "the North Tower Pile smoke cloud has benzene in it" A few minute sample and we have a new CT? What a bunch of junk ideas. Thermite, says it all.

Hand waving! Thermite? What a laugh knowing Jones made up thermite. There was zero thermite used to destroy the WTC, by even mentioning thermite you have entered into a rarified strata of stupid ideas! Why stupid, zero evidence and the impacts and fires did the job. Just hand waving! It is you.

EPA was sampling, this is it, the total CT is they urged workers to wear respirators, and now you make up lies. Good for you!

To protect workers at the site, EPA attempts to identify the highest concentration levels of benzene by taking grab samples where smoke plumes have been sighted at the work site. Some of the results have been dramatically higher (up to 4000 times) than those taken in the surrounding streets. EPA has urged workers to wear respirators and other protective gear, which the Agency and others have provided. Used properly, respirators can protect workers from exposure to benzene and other contaminants at the levels we have found.

The only think unusual about 9/11 is the few fringe people who can't understand Jones made up Thermite after 4 years and he was fired (retired in lieu of) due to spreading lies without evidence; he is an embarrassment. This paper is more proof Jones et al are just pure fantasy on 9/11.

 

[R.Mackey]

Also, just in case anyone here still thinks benzene production is unusual:

Benzene and Barbeque

Clearly the situation here is quite a bit more complicated, but that's still no reason to start imagining comic-book supervillains with magical incendiaries.

 

[WildCat]

Maybe like Jones with his "white dust cloud" fiasco, he didn't bother yo verify his sources. That major problem doesn't seem to bother him for some reason.

Let's give him the benefit of the doubt for now.

Anyone who has seen the videos of the burning towers and says the fires were small and isolated is a liar.

The only benefit of the doubt I will offer goes to the severely mentally handicapped, of which our new Steven Jones fanboy doesn't appear to be.

 

[RedIbis]

Actually, it does. Again, see the DELTA group papers.

And regarding the last point, how does Mr. Ryan's hypothesis account for the greatest spike occuring long afterward? Surely there's no huge stockpile of nanononsense detonating after it was removed? How does that work??

I don't think Ryan does present such a hypothesis. The question to you is what could be the cause of such spikes, remembering that the highest recorded levels occur long after office contents and debris are removed?

 

[Pardalis]

I don't think Ryan does present such a hypothesis. The question to you is what could be the cause of such spikes, remembering that the highest recorded levels occur long after office contents and debris are removed?

Can we agree then that this particular point can't possibly have anything to do with conspiracy theories?

 

[beachnut]

zero understanding of physics and conservation of mominutm, lack of gravity thrown in

There is no deceleration. Why? Because the building is disintegrating out from under the upper block. There was no deceleration, the block accelerated through what was below it. How else can that lack of resistance be explained except by removing what would cause resistance from below. And that is consistent with account after account of firefighters hearing and seeing large explosions just prior to the upper block falling. With nothing to slow the fall of the upper block, that mass of material accelerated into the rest of the building. At no point is there deceleration witnessed in what is available in the mechanical evidence before the entire collapse becomes obscured in a semi-gaseous cloud of pulverized concrete and office materials.

No explosions. Was it thermite, or RDX. Neither.

You need some help in physics, and no firemen say large explosions, they heard big noises of a building falling. But zero sounds of explosives. Over 6 years and you are starting at brick woo.

Your problem is summed up for you, free; zero understanding of physics ,conservation of momentum, and gravity.

 

[RedIbis]

Can we agree then that this particular point can't possibly have anything to do with conspiracy theories?

Unfortunately, controlled demolition is equally justifiable to gravity driven collapse and theories other than the conventional ones should be explored.

 

[sdemetri]

First

I apologize for the multiple posts. My browser froze up not showing the posts as going through.

And thanks pomeroo for the synopsis of how the chief's quote is parsed here. Good points. But I stand by the fact that the fires were "not unusual." They were large office building fires, originally ignited by jet fuel, which burned off rapidly, according to NIST, and then proceeded to burn as typical office building fires do. The plumes of dark smoke indicate they were not burning in an oxygen rich environment.

ElMondo's "probably" statement, "Some "large structures" that were completely aflame probably didn't suffer the same size conflagration that the Twin Towers did..." elicited my reply, and I stand by it. There have been very large structures that have suffered much larger fires, and didn't react as the Twin Towers with their "not unusual" and much smaller fires.

Dave Rogers, the "calculations ad nauseum" comment is from my POV a lot of singing to the choir.

Be that as it may, you said, "If the downward force is greater than the resistance of the structure, the falling block will accelerate downwards; if it's less, then it won't fall at all. It's really that simple." Absolutely. Very intuitive concept, and I don't argue that. It makes no sense to me when viewing the video of the North Tower collapsing to measure acceleration, and then have you conjure up an hypothesis that on its face contradicts what you just said, "If the downward force is greater than the resistance of the structure, the falling block will accelerate..." Your calculation, nor what I could see in any of Bzant's calculations, show that the downward force WAS greater than the resistance of the supposedly intact building below it. As I said, I was trained in chemistry, not engineering, but that formulation for the upper block is entirely counter-intuitive. The building was supposedly intact, was built structurally stronger in the lower floors. As Ross said, the buildings should not have disintergrated. The resistance offered by the lower, supposedly intact structure was sufficient to arrest collapse. It didn't because of addition forces at work. In your argument you have not shown what those forces were in a way that corroborates with many other observations. You are saying MG>F1+F2, the buildings collapsed, and that proves no controlled demolition. I don't see it that way at all. We will have to agree to disagree on this point.

My only reply to Mackey, my statement is better said that NIST denied molten metals. I don't have the citation, and don't appear yet to be able to post it anyway, but I am sure you know the reference I cite: John Gross giving a talk at the University of Texas in Austin. And molten metals in the pile are not explained by any of the studies I know of to date, and the molten metals in the pile can be reasonable concluded to be associated with the fires.

As far as your other comments, lots of hand waving and making claims to knowledge that even Cahill had the sense not to do. You sound like a prosecutor reaching for every straw to counter the defense's protestations, no matter how far fetched. Dispute, and dispute vigorously, something might stick. Your resort to "logic" is self-congratulatory, but inconclusive. And calling me a liar, well, that sounds more grade school playground than anything else. But I note that is how much of the argumentation goes down here. Sing to the choir, son, you've got it down pat.

 

[Pardalis]

Unfortunately, controlled demolition is equally justifiable to gravity driven collapse and theories other than the conventional ones should be explored.

Pay attention Red, I'm talking about the spike in air concentrations of benzene 5 months after the collapse.

I'm no chemist or meteorologist but that's a heck of a long time for traces of CD or thermate to remain and propagate, especially in a windy place like Manhattan.

 

[ElMondoHummus]

True, but also evidence of extreme temperatures, which are shown in other ways.

What it is not evidence of is the fact that such microspheres were created in the building or rubble piles fires, let alone by thermite. Nothing about their existence proves the fact that they were created in the fires, and given that ferrous and molybdenum spheres are the result of a variety of processes - brake dust, diesel emissions, welding and torch cutting, etc. - which were known to have occurred in the history of the towers, it is ludicrous to posit that such "energetic nanoparticles" (overfancy terminology for "thermite") were responsible for their formation.

Worcester also said what they found was entirely surprising. And what they found was evaporated steel, holes in flanges thinning down to sharp edges. Completely unexpected and unexplained, in spite of the eutectic reactions they also found evidence of. Careful you don't try to explain for them what they found.

I'm fully aware they found areas of erosion. And those areas were the result of eutectic reactions, not the result of thermite. That is also quite obvious from a reading of their material. Read what they found:

Rapid deterioration of the steel was a result of heating with oxidation in combination with intergranular melting due to the presence of sulfur. The formation of the eutectic mixture of iron oxide and iron sulfide lowers the temperature at which liquid can form in this steel. This strongly suggests that the temperatures in this region of the steel beam approached ~1,000ºC, forming the eutectic liquid by a process similar to making a “blacksmith’s weld” in a hand forge.

And no, it was not unexplained. The erosion was due to the presence of sulfur and temperatures postulated by those researchers to be close to 1000 degrees C. Which is far lower than what thermite reacts at (and which is also why thermite destroys eutectic mixtures), but well within the range the debris pile was reaching with nothing more than standard office combustibles.

Oh, but it does matter, because that is what Cahill found unusual about his data. The data was not typical of a large structural fire.

You miss my point. There were many unusual details about the event that differentiates the World Trade Center disaster from common fires.

You mean the conflagration MIT's Eagar said was "not unusual." You mean the conflagration hundreds of firefighters went up into the buildings to fight, one of them, a chief saying, "two small pockets... two lines to take it down..." The fires were not that large, and other large structure fires the EPA has monitored have not shown the same VOC releases that these did, or in patterns that resemble the releases recorded here. You haven't made much of an argument.

Oh, no... you did not just make the "two small pockets" "two lines" mistake there, did you? From a firefighter who's posted in this forum:

Most conspiracy theorists think two lines sounds like a small amount and therefore the fire was small right? Well not necessarily, two 2 1/2 inch hoses with 1 1/8th inch smooth bore nozzles can deliver more water at greater pressure than compared to the 1 1/2 inch unlined hoses that would have been stored on site, which anybody in the fire services knows, is usually crap since they don't meet the same requirements as hoses used by the fire department. As basic SOP during a high rise, they would have opened the gravity tanks located above them and turned on the fire pumps (which most likely would have been automatic) in addition to hooking two engines into an exterior outlet to add more pressure in the pipe, 650 psi to be exact. The nozzle pressure would have been reduced to 80-70 psi either by a PRD (Pressure Regulating Device) or at the stand pipe valve. Also the second line would have been hooked up at least two floors below the first line as not to interfere with residual pressure. So what does this all mean? Well if the stand pipe systems were still intact and operational they would have been able to deliver over 338 GPM (Gallons per minute)

GPM = (29.7)(d)^2(NP)

GPM = Gallons Per Minute
29.7 = Constant
d = Diameter in inches
NP = Nozzle Pressure

(29.7)(1.125)^2(80)(Use 81 for Square Root Purposes)
(29.7)(1.265)(9)
(37.5705, Rounded down to 37.57)(9)

GPM = 338


and at a weight of 8.33 pounds per gallon you are talking about over a ton of water with just one line alone. Now if you double that you are looking at over 2.5 tons of water.


Please if you have anything to add or correct go ahead

Accuracy is necessary in discussions like these. Chief Palmer did not say "two small", he said "two isolated pockets". He wasn't saying they were small at all, and the fact that he was dedicating two lines to just those pockets speaks to the size of those fires. On top of that, he was merely talking about what he saw on the 78th floor of the south tower; anyone who's studied the fires would know that there were mutiple fires above that, from floor 78 to 82, with small spot fires on floors 83 and 84. The tower fires spread over multiple acre-wide floors. Calling them small is contradictory to reality.

Regarding Eagar: Let's look at what he said:

Thus, the fact that there were 90,000 L of jet fuel on a few floors of the WTC does not mean that this was an unusually hot fire. The temperature of the fire at the WTC was not unusual, and it was most definitely not capable of melting steel.

He said it was not unusual in the context of claims that the steel melted. And on top of that, he was discussing the tower fires prior to collapse, not the rubble pile fires afterwards, which had entirely different characteristics due to the differences in ventilation and concentration of combustibles.

And now, away from the diversion necessitated by the distortion of Palmer's remark and back to the crux of the issue: The size of the fires. These fires were exceptionally large - again, multistory, and on most of the involved floors, an acre wide. And that's before the towers fell. After they fell - which is the period of time Ryan and Jones are discussing in their paper - not only do you have those fires concentrated into whatever size the debris piles compacted the floors into, you also have one of the longest lasting strucutral & debris pile fires ever. The compression leads to pockets of intense fire, as the burning floors are now collapsed into a fraction of their former height, and the duration of the fires is well documented (they were not extinguished until December, if I recall correctly).

So, given that these fires were unusually large, unusually intense in the rubble piles (note that last: In the rubble piles; measurements were taken that read up to 2800 degrees F), and unusually long lasting, how does any comparison to other structure fires hold?

This is what I mean when I say that the World Trade Center events were unusual in many regards.

We know because Cahill and EPA found the data THEY collected unusual. I am wondering if you have even read Ryan's paper yourself.

Of course I've read it. That doesn't mean I'm swayed by it. On the contrary, I see that they fail to link the VOC emissions with thermite. Thermite is hardly necessary to account for such spikes.

I am not disquising anything, or trying to fool anyone. Nanocomposites are a working hypothesis. They are not proved. But there is possible evidence they were used, in the visual evidence, in possible physical evidence, in the evidence of extreme temperatures. They better explain the findings Cahill and EPA reported, which neither they themselves, nor anyone else have explained.

You are parroting a pair of researcher who do have a track record of disguising and trying to fool people. Look in prior threads in this forum for evidence of such; I'll give you a free example. Steven Jones continues to attribute the 1,3-DPP to some "solgel" that holds thermite in place, when his very source attributes it to the plastics available in computer monitors. It is deceptive to argue the point he does in the absence of his own source's attribution of the signal to a more mundane origin, especially given the fact that computer monitors are among the known contents of the fire-involved floors.

At any rate, given the known deceptiveness of Ryan and Jones, when you parrot their choice of phrase, you do in fact end up disguising their conclusion with terminology. What they are referring to is "thermite". Why they choose to use a euphemism to refer to it now I do not know, but the fact remains that they are adjusting their terminology unnecessarily. They are discussing "thermite". Any other term only serves to disguise this fact.

I am not arguing how they got there if they were used, only that they can explain as yet unexplained phenomena. And they do that very well. Careful you don't rest your argument on something that isn't provable. If someone DID have access to place incendiaries or explosives by means you are not aware of, your argument that they could not have been used because they could not have been placed falls completely apart. In other words, for you to say that is not airtight. It is pure speculation.

I return your own advice to you yourself, with one modification: Careful that you do not rest your argument on something that is refuted. I realize that you're not arguing how incendiaries got there, but that does not change the fact that this requirement for the theory essentially moots it. There is zero evidence of prior installation of such material. And the argument "if someone DID have access" is wishful thinking, not to mention refuted by simple logical analysis: If someone did indeed have access, then we'd be seeing gross evidence of its use, not small erosions on isolated beams, and we wouldn't have to be resorting to esoteric discussions over microspheres. We'd have seen clear and unambiguous evidence of its use, as well as its emplacement. For example, core columns would have shown clear signs of thermite use, and we would have also seen columns separate at locations other than where they were welded together; we would have seen the columns separate at points corresponding to where the workers had access to the beams to install the thermite. On top of that, the building occupants would also have seen evidence of the construction, unless you want to posit that the thermite was somehow emplaced between the building evacutation and the subsequent collapse; I'd really love to see that fantasy explained.

All in all, this subject is yet another one grinding to a halt on known faults with the conspiracy hypothesis. The only new component to this argument - the one Jones and Ryan present, I mean - is that they're discussing evidence from the rubble piles, and the pyrolysis emissions. They're still attempting to swing the argument of thermite around, and it still fails for the reasons it has always failed for. New attempts to link the presence of aromatics and other volatile organics to thermite use are novel, but do not overcome the previous points the thermite fantasy failed at.

 

[Pardalis]

As far as your other comments, lots of hand waving and making claims to knowledge that even Cahill had the sense not to do. You sound like a prosecutor reaching for every straw to counter the defense's protestations, no matter how far fetched. Dispute, and dispute vigorously, something might stick. Your resort to "logic" is self-congratulatory, but inconclusive. And calling me a liar, well, that sounds more grade school playground than anything else. But I note that is how much of the argumentation goes down here. Sing to the choir, son, you've got it down pat.

You don't think that Jone's big mistake about the "white dust cloud" claim isn't cause for concern about his credibility and methodology?

 

[lapman]

And thanks pomeroo for the synopsis of how the chief's quote is parsed here. Good points. But I stand by the fact that the fires were "not unusual." They were large office building fires, originally ignited by jet fuel, which burned off rapidly, according to NIST, and then proceeded to burn as typical office building fires do. The plumes of dark smoke indicate they were not burning in an oxygen rich environment.

So you believe another "Truth Movement" lie. Please explain the black smoke here.

 

[WildCat]

The plumes of dark smoke indicate they were not burning in an oxygen rich environment.

Oh dear god!

 

[DavidJames]

Oh dear god!

Can "pull it" be far behind?