Metatheory and the NIST report

[jay howard]

Yes, they did. This is evidence of a good theory, is it not?

You aren't about to invoke some horrible circular logic, are you?

On what page of which section are the tests reported?

Maybe this will put the whole debate to rest.

 

[Crazy Chainsaw]

QUOTE=[ cmcaulif;2848034]I think it should also be noted that Thermite and thermate are ruled out by the chemical signatures as recorded in page C-5 of FEMA appendix C

In the link to thermite, the chemical reaction is shown as producing aluminum oxide, which would be present in the FEMA analysis if thermite had been used.

A Thermate reaction will also produce aluminum oxide, but you will notice that 29% of thermate is barium nitrate, which would also appear on the EDX in addition to Al2O3 if thermate had been used.[/QUOTE]


Actually Al203 was present in the data as Aluminum please be more acturate, I also doubt thermite or thermate were used and even if a signature for thermite was found such as barium, that could be explained as well, there are things besides thermate that use barium.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barium

I do not see however how thermates, or thermite would have survived the impact and fires.

 

[Anti-sophist]

This is a question no one has even attempted to answer here.

I will be -happy- to look into and discuss this issue with you once we've dealt with the issue of the maximum temperature the steel reached.

I have absolutely no intention of spending any more time and effort looking into your claims if you are going to just change the subject whenever you don't like the way things are going. I'm sure this is a sentiment you can understand.

 

[Anti-sophist]

On what page of which section are the tests reported?

Maybe this will put the whole debate to rest.

http://wtc.nist.gov/NISTNCSTAR1-5E.pdf

Pages 31-33 (of the pdf file) is the executive summary.

 

[TerryUK]

What if the evidence to support the temperatures cannot be verified?

Can we then believe in the CD theory?

Well, it would not be reasonable to look at the possibility of CD unless you have good cause to suspect that.

NIST found no evidence of explosives or incendiary devices, and concluded that the collapse initiation was due to heat from the fire weakening the steel, plus the damage caused when the two planes hit each of the two towers.

However, if you had on 9/11, a third high-rise building collapse at the WTC, without having a plane crash into it ( pehaps because the plane never made it ) well then you might just be justified in having some suspicions that a plane was not essential for a collapse...
If this third building collapsed in a manner which mimicked perfectly a controlled demolition, then your first choice, regarding theory of collapse, should be deliberate demolition.

 

[Gravy]

If this third building collapsed in a manner which mimicked perfectly a controlled demolition, then your first choice, regarding theory of collapse, should be deliberate demolition.

And since that in no way happened (um, Terry, we have abundant evidence that the building was in imminent danger of collapse and zero evidence or hint of demolition), we can relegate that idiotic theory to the dustbin.

 

[R.Mackey]

Well, it would not be reasonable to look at the possibility of CD unless you have good cause to suspect that.

NIST found no evidence of explosives or incendiary devices, and concluded that the collapse initiation was due to heat from the fire weakening the steel, plus the damage caused when the two planes hit each of the two towers.

However, if you had on 9/11, a third high-rise building collapse at the WTC, without having a plane crash into it ( pehaps because the plane never made it ) well then you might just be justified in having some suspicions that a plane was not essential for a collapse...
If this third building collapsed in a manner which mimicked perfectly a controlled demolition, then your first choice, regarding theory of collapse, should be deliberate demolition.

Yes, if we did. Of course, we didn't.

Unless you've conveniently forgotten about the thousands of tons of flaming debris that hit it. Or you think that burning out of control for ten hours, followed by a sixteen-second collapse initiation without any sign, sound, or shock of explosives satisfies "mimicked perfectly a controlled demolition." Or you ignore that several other nearby structures were also destroyed by debris and fires...

Use the search function, please. And if you must be so naïve, please do it elsewhere.

 

[T.A.M.]

yes, there really was a plane meant to hit WTC7. See Office Depot was all out of paper shredders, and as a result, the only way to get rid of the sekrit documents housed in WTC7, was to FLY A HUGE JET AIRLINER INTO IT, AND THEN HAVE IT COME DOWN THROUGH A CONTROLLED DEMOLITION!!!!

TAM

 

[TerryUK]

Yes, if we did. Of course, we didn't.

Unless you've conveniently forgotten about the thousands of tons of flaming debris that hit it. Or you think that burning out of control for ten hours, followed by a sixteen-second collapse initiation without any sign, sound, or shock of explosives satisfies "mimicked perfectly a controlled demolition." Or you ignore that several other nearby structures were also destroyed by debris and fires...

Sorry, I think you are over-egging all that stuff you mentioned above.

And if you must be so naïve, please do it elsewhere.

Aye,aye sir!

naive? LOL

 

[beachnut]

fires burning all day, steel building, falls, and your problem?

Well, it would not be reasonable to look at the possibility of CD unless you have good cause to suspect that.

NIST found no evidence of explosives or incendiary devices, and concluded that the collapse initiation was due to heat from the fire weakening the steel, plus the damage caused when the two planes hit each of the two towers.

However, if you had on 9/11, a third high-rise building collapse at the WTC, without having a plane crash into it ( pehaps because the plane never made it ) well then you might just be justified in having some suspicions that a plane was not essential for a collapse...
If this third building collapsed in a manner which mimicked perfectly a controlled demolition, then your first choice, regarding theory of collapse, should be deliberate demolition.

WTC7 burned all day and fell. When fires in steel buildings burn all day they fail, and some fall. Please ignore the damage down by the debris, and then ignore all the evidence. Then join some group of fact less people who make up the CD stuff out of thin air and ignorance.

No, the first choice after seeing the building leaning, badly damaged and burning out of control all day is fire caused the collapse. But as an engineer it is hard to get me to fall for the lies of 9/11 truth, I need some facts, and when the idiots of 9/11 truth show me broken windows and as they move and the pixel motion looks to them like squibs, I just laugh and wonder what makes truthers so darn gullible? What is it? You seem to have drank the Kool-aid, why are you guys so gullible? (too bad you have zero facts to go with your Kool-aid )

 

[TerryUK]

And since that in no way happened (um, Terry, we have abundant evidence that the building was in imminent danger of collapse and zero evidence or hint of demolition), we can relegate that idiotic theory to the dustbin.

Oh, OK... silly me

 

[Gravy]

Oh, OK... silly me

I'm glad you agree. If you want to talk no-evidence, no-logic, no-motive, know-nothing foolishness, you'll find plenty of playpals in the Loose Change forum sandbox. Don't insult our intelligence and attempt to waste our time with it. Fair enough?

 

[TerryUK]

Don't insult our intelligence and attempt to waste our time with it. Fair enough?

I've not checked out many of your 9,468 posts, but it seems to me that it may just be that you are the one who's wasting time LOL ( your own as well as that of other people) But be my guest

 

[jay howard]

Look, I've identified quite clearly where you've misrepresented NIST. I've summarized it too. What you're doing here is fussing about the temperature of the recovered steel vis-a-vis higher temperatures elsewhere in the structure. There is no contradiction! None! NIST's models are consistent with the temperature history of their recovered steel! You have misrepresented this, saying that there's a problem!

And I responded to your post here

That's a lie.

Remember when you were arguing about the significance of the truss tests with respect to the global collapse model? I quoted for you NIST's own words describing the motivation for the experiment, showing that it had nothing to do with the collapse. Do you remember your reply? Here it is:

So, as you can see, you have knowingly taken NIST's experiments out of context. Stop doing that.

We don't need an intermediary to tell us what the tests were for. We can look at the parameters for ourselves and see if there is any information that is relevant to our theory. You are aware of this.

NIST doesn't have to "recognize" this, i.e. talk about it in the report, since it's out of scope.

It's only "out of the scope" if they already know what caused the collapses. And how would they know that unless they knew the conditions that created this pile of steel exceeding 600C?

You see the problem? Previously you considered any result higher than that found in the recovered steel to be a purely speculative input. Ergo, you denied the existence of higher temperatures in the steel as per NIST.

That does not follow, nor is it what I have been arguing. My point has NOT been to deny the existence of higher temperatures, but to get anyone here to concede that positing higher temperatures is NOT based on forensic evidence recovered by NIST.

This parallels the discussion with Anti-sophist.

What source did NIST appeal to in order to decide that the recovered steel (none of which got hotter than 600C for more than 15 minutes) was unlike the steel that failed in their simulations? We know 600C for 15 minutes is not hot enough nor a long enough exposure to produce failure of any of the expected loads. If anyone here would like to argue that the steel failed under these conditions, please make a case. NIST certainly makes no such attempt.

Did they find any steel in the debris that matched their predicted failed steel in the simulations? No. Does NIST cite any of the USGS evidence or any other sources that would indicate that the steel got hotter than 600C? No.

So where does NIST get these temperatures? It is not clear.

Now, if you've backed off from this position, and you do understand that the recovered steel temperatures in no way cast doubt that some steel was much hotter, then what on earth are you still arguing for?

I'm not backing off the position that the lack of evidence for hotter than 600C steel casts doubt on the existence of hotter steel. But I've never said that this means definitively that no hotter steel exists. I've NEVER claimed that, and to interpret my words in such a way is just a straw man representation.

Except that NIST does not decide that the "recovered physical evidence was uncharacteristic of the fires." Show me where they said that, or take it back. Right now.

They need the steel to get hotter than 600C for 15 minutes in order to produce a global collapse in their models.

None of the recovered NIST steel was representative of the failure modes of the steel in their simulations.

When I say it was "uncharacteristic of the fires" I mean that according to NIST, this could not have been representative of the steel that they theorize failed and caused the global collapse.

What problem do you have with this?

I made you a list in my previous post. Unsurprisingly, you've hand-waved it all away again.

Do you have a specific criticism with my response?

Loaded question. Depends on many factors. Are we talking about steel temperature, or exterior temperature? What is the condition of fireproofing? How much load is on the floor? Is the floor undamaged?

"How Long" is a total non-sequitur. Steel strength is a function of its temperature, not a function of the time it stays at that temperature.

Specifically, when we look at their model for a truss section on pgs 97-98, in order to fail they raise the temperature of the entire section to 700C for 30 minutes and then identify 2 modes of failure: sagging of the floors and loss of truss seat support.

Do we have reason to believe an entire truss section was raised to 700C for 30 minutes?

You've previously stated that this model was not an attempt to corroborate the NIST theory, I know. What conditions, then do you interpret the NIST theory as spelling out in order to initiate collapse?

I did. I gave you a bulleted list.

To which I responded.

You're saying that because that is what you require to stop "debating." Not scientists. You arbitrarily decided that, unless someone produced for your own personal interest, a piece of steel from the floor trusses that definitely reached above 600^oC, then you weren't going to be happy. I suspect you chose this knowing that it wouldn't happen.

I'm just saying that a piece of physical evidence that corroborates the key failure modes in the simulations would certainly put this debate to bed.

If they don't find them, as I've stated before, that doesn't mean they don't exist. It DOES require us to consider the possibility that it is not the evidence which is lacking, but our theory.

If you have read NCSTAR1-3, you will see piles of failed floor truss material -- bales of it. All failed in a big way. None of it with any way to trace to any individual floor, as it wasn't marked to begin with. All of it impossible to test for temperature. That's right, impossible. There's no paint left to do the mud-cracking test, and the condition of the steel is too poor to permit metallurgical region and microcrack analysis. Even if we could, it would still be impossible to prove that it happened before collapse.

That's fine. But if it is, as you say, impossible to test for temperature, that provides no more substantive reason to postulate temperatures above what the testable physical evidence indicates. Do you see this as positive evidence of steel temperatures in excess of 600C?

There is no "significance." Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Right. And the absence of evidence does not confirm the existence of evidence either.

Does NIST have any physical evidence to corroborate the hotter steel? No. On what grounds, if not the physical evidence, does NIST corroborate their simulated failure modes?

USGS. See above. It's not in the report because it has nothing to do with why the buildings collapsed.... Out of scope. NIST reports on the evidence they have, not the evidence they don't have or wish they had.

Again, if they didn't have the evidence, how did NIST already know what determinations to make? Why would severe temperatures be irrelevant to an investigation into a building collapse?

Absolutely yes, office fires can. Read the DELTA report. The total thermal energy from ordinary combustion totalled approximately 20 kilotons TNT equivalent.

That article didn't answer any questions about the source of energy capable of producing the effects we saw. In fact, it characterizes the fires as "oxygen-poor debris piles" which does not help answer the question of how the fires in the piles could have gotten so hot.

I also point out that this question is totally irrelevant to the question of NIST, and thrown in as a diversionary tactic. You're beginning to destabilize.

This is directly relevant to the ability of the NIST theory to handle the evidence. You have reach outside the NIST report in reference to steel above 600C, but you have no response to my question:

Do you concede that the only place in the NIST report we see WTC steel temperatures above 600C for more than 15 minutes is in the simulations?

Try me. Show me your simulation. I know a great deal about structural and fluid mechanical modeling. If you did it right and reached this conclusion, I would actually consider that valid if not compelling evidence.

Alright, how about cases A for WTC 1 and C for WTC 2 on page 126? Why doesn't that simulation, in which the buildings didn't fail, count?

Show me where NIST made up results. If you can't, you're misrepresenting them again.... Show me one thing -- just one thing that contradicts NIST -- and you may have something worth talking about.

From a previous post:

"The less severe cases were discarded after the aircraft impact results were compared to observed events. The middle cases (which became Case A for WTC 1 and Case C for WTC 2) were discarded after the structural response analysis of major subsystems were compared to observed events. The more severe case (which became Case B for WTC 1 and Case D for WTC 2) was used for the global analysis of each tower."(144)

In the severe cases, NIST uses the estimate of 5lb/sq ft of office fuel, yet previously, NIST

"... estimated the fuel loading on these floors to have been about 4 lb/ft2 (20 kg/m2), or about 60 tons per floor. This was somewhat lower than found in prior surveys of office spaces. The small number of interior walls, and thus the minimal amount of combustible interior finish, and the limited bookshelf space account for much of the differences."(77)

which corresponds to the "middle case" in their scenarios. One problem with the middle cases, NIST says, is that,

"Upon a preliminary examination of the middle cases, it became clear that the towers would likely remain standing."(144)

And we can't have that, because that would necessitate revamping the official theory. So, instead, they discard the middle cases based on "observed events" despite the fact they admit that 4lb/sq ft corresponds to their own estimates.

 

[Gravy]

I've not checked out many of your 9,468 posts, but it seems to me that it may just be that you are the one who's wasting time LOL ( your own as well as that of other people) But be my guest

No, arguing the idiotic WTC 7 controlled demolition theory, without a shred of evidence, is a waste of time. Disseminating accurate information to counter the lies and attempted historical revisionism of the conspiracists is not, in my opinion. I get emails almost every day thanking me for my efforts, and that's good enough for me.

 

[beachnut]

why waste time with facts, be like...

I've not checked out many of your 9,468 posts, but it seems to me that it may just be that you are the one who's wasting time LOL ( your own as well as that of other people) But be my guest

The most obvious thing about you? You have not wasted a nanosecond looking up facts, evident by your CD fantasy.

Find some facts and hurry back. See ya later TerryUK. lol

I can not wait until you present "all" the other contradictory evidence! Hurry back. LOL

 

[Gravy]

We don't need an intermediary to tell us what the tests were for.

Jay, you very obviously do. And now you need an intermediary to teach you how to listen. This is an awful performance.

 

[R.Mackey]

I need your strict attention, jay.

Your last post contains 16 errors of fact or reasoning, and two evasions. I counted them. Nearly all of them are things that I have explained to you over and over and over and over and over and over again. This just isn't sinking in for you.

It's bouncing off because you're talking about too many things at once. I will pick out your worst mistakes only, and I will not deviate from them until you understand. If you pass this part, we can move on to something more challenging. Deal?

We don't need an intermediary to tell us what the tests were for. We can look at the parameters for ourselves and see if there is any information that is relevant to our theory. You are aware of this.

This is Dreadful Mistake Number 1. You are still erroneously claiming that the UL truss tests, described in NCSTAR1-6B, conflict with the NIST global heating and structural model.

Now, I need you to explain, in clear phrases, the following:

• What observations you feel are important from the truss tests
• What you conclude from these observations
• How these conclusions affect the NIST theory overall
• How, quantitatively, these conclusions need to be adjusted in order to be useful

Give references for each. I need you to do this because I've been correcting you on this since page one, and you still don't get it.

They need the steel to get hotter than 600C for 15 minutes in order to produce a global collapse in their models.

None of the recovered NIST steel was representative of the failure modes of the steel in their simulations.

When I say it was "uncharacteristic of the fires" I mean that according to NIST, this could not have been representative of the steel that they theorize failed and caused the global collapse.

And here is Dreadful Mistake Number 2. Somehow you think that "600C for 15 minutes" is a magical threshold at which point things collapse. I need you explain this in more detail:

1. Where you get the idea that 600C is the critical temperature for collapse
2. Where you get the idea that 15 minutes is the critical time period for collapse
3. Where NIST states that steel at lower temperatures cannot contribute to the collapse
4. Your understanding of what the observed failure modes are in the steel
5. Your understanding of what the predicted steel failure modes are from the model
6. Why you believe the failure modes do not agree

Again, full references.

As has been clear from the beginning, you do not understand the NIST report. You therefore are not equipped to dispute it. If you wish to understand the NIST report, you have a lot of work ahead of you, and I suggest you start here.

 

[TerryUK]

No, arguing the idiotic WTC 7 controlled demolition theory, without a shred of evidence, is a waste of time. Disseminating accurate information to counter the lies and attempted historical revisionism of the conspiracists is not, in my opinion. I get emails almost every day thanking me for my efforts, and that's good enough for me.

That's fair enough.

But you seem to be totally intransigent when it comes to the other view on this... you want everybody to accept all the evidence that suits your desired conclusion, whilst at the same time rejecting the totality of evidence to the contrary.

You realize that for 'your' version to be correct, all the other contradictory evidence has to be completely wrong , the probability of which must be v.low

 

[Gravy]

That's fair enough.

But you seem to be totally intransigent when it comes to the other view on this... you want everybody to accept all the evidence that suits your desired conclusion, whilst at the same time rejecting the totality of evidence to the contrary.

Surprise! I'm also totally intransigent regarding the idea that pink unicorns run the IMF.

Since the totality of evidence for demolition is nil, and the evidence that building 7 was in imminent danger of collapse and then did collapse is mountainous, I'm quite comfortable with my position. This is called being a rational adult. Do not ask us to explain this to you again.

You may be under the mistaken impression that 10,000th person to raise this nonsense here gets a prize.

The sandbox is thataway.

Edit: I think a good way for conspiracists to look at this is, "Okay, what evidence do I have that wouldn't be laughed out of any prosecutor's office. Not any U.S. prosecutor's office, but any prosecutor's office in the world?"