We previously saw a Fox News pie chart that had a couple extra slices (here). Now, fair and balanced math adds up to 120 percent of voters indicating that they view the science on global warming to be rigged.
This is an interesting Rasmussen poll when you add up the number and discover that you are in a parallel universe.
The question is: “In order to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming, how likely is it that some scientists have falsified research data?” According to the poll, 35 percent thought it very likely, 24 percent somewhat likely, 21 percent not very likely, and 5 percent not likely at all (15 percent weren’t sure).
This rather dubious poll is offered to show that people are dubious about the science and math of global warming experts.
For the full story, click here
Slartibartfast: “First, take a minute to think of the heroes of 9/11 – the men and women of NYPD and NYFD and the passengers on United Flight 93.”
Spare me the appeal to emotion; why not regale us with song and poem? (See Rheinquist’s dissent in Texas v. Johnson — pathetic)
Slartibartfast: Assumptions: GPE of WTC1 = WTC2 = 500 GJ (gigajoules) (From here on out, I will just refer to WTC or ‘the tower’)”
Yet the entire event included WTC 7; the collapse of which left and even hotter pile of rubble than one of the Towers and just as much molten metal. Accordingly your theory fails to account for the molten metal at ground zero and is therefore incomplete and incorrect.
Slartibartfast: “The collapse of WTC did not involve added explosives”
That’s a conclusory assertion, not a fact.
Slartibartfast: “All of the simplifying assumptions that I have previously specified”
Most of which were also conclusory assertions.
Slartibartfast: “The collapse of WTC registered 2.1 on the richter scale”
Sure did, but since you’re using the conclusory assertion that there were no explosives involved, you’re using the seismic evidence to bolster your fallacy.
Slartibartfast: “The collapse of WTC was as loud as a rocket engine or the Krakatoa eruption from 100 milies away”
All that represents is energy unavailable for conversion into heat. Or… so what?
Slartibartfast: “The sound of the collapse lasted for 1 minute”
Relevance counselor?
Slartibartfast: “The thermal characteristics of iron (specific heat and heat of fusion) from the paper that Robert linked to are correct”
Wow; relevance to this alleged point you’re building?
Slartibartfast: “A metric ton of TNT is equivalent to 4.6 MJ (megaJoules)”
And how many joules of energy represent all the dripping faucets in the country?
Slartibartfast: “‘Little Boy’ had a yield of 13-18 kilotons”
Okay
Slartibartfast: “room temperature is 68 F”
And there are four pecks in a bushel…
Slartibartfast: I accounted for energy in the following forms:
GPE
KE
thermal energy in the rubble
seismic energy
sonic energy
energy to reduce the building to rubble and create the pyroclastic flow”
No you didn’t. You argued in a post hoc ergo propter hoc fashion based on bare assumptions targeted at a specific outcome. Your 17.4% GPE argument assumed the very conclusion which you were supposed to prove; namely that the collapse created the molten metal. Once again: How many joules does it take to ‘liquify’ one kg of steel? And at what velocity must one kg of steel need to fall in order for it to ‘liquify?’
http://jonathanturley.org/2009/12/09/one-hundred-and-twenty-percent-of-people-cant-be-wrong-fox-news-shows-people-are-dubious-about-the-accuracy-of-global-warming-science-with-a-poll-showing-120-percent-of-people-are-skeptical/#comment-98758
The aforesaid fallicious reasoning poisoned every other calculation in your process.
Slartibartfast: “I assert that the amount of other forms of energy present in the collapse of WTC are much smaller than any of these forms (except sonic energy, it’s a wuss). If you feel otherwise, please explain what form of energy I’m neglecting and why that energy is relevant on a scale measured in GJ.”
You do a hell of a lot of asserting; you’re just tad light on forming so much as a syllogism or proving anything.
Slartibartfast: “Depending on the time required for the collapse (free fall requires 9.18s), the various quantities change.”
Do you also assert that buildings falling at free fall speed is an everyday natural phenomena? Sorry, but it seems a bit fucking silly to me.
Slartibartfast: “On the morning of September 11, there was half a terrajoule of gravitational potential energy in the WTC, the equivalent of over 100 kilotons of TNT (5 – 10 times the energy released by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima) or enough energy to power the flux capacitor for nearly seven seconds (Doc Brown only needed the duration of a lightning strike to send Marty forward 30 years).”
And the energy in WTC 7? And the length of the time of collapse, what was that 6.5 seconds? The height? The velocity of the collapse?
Once again: How many joules does it take to ‘liquify’ one kg of steel? And at what velocity must one kg of steel need to fall in order for it to ‘liquify?’ — U=mgh?
Slartibartfast: “This energy exists to this day, this is my best guess as to where it went.”
I’ve never seen anyone use the law of conservation of energy as a fucking Hallmark card.
Slartibartfast: Somewhere between 80 to 250 GJ went in to collapsing the building, pulverizing debris, and the pyroclastic flow.”
What happened to the 17.4% GPE? You know, the figure you got from assuming the conclusion you were allegedly going to prove?
Slartibartfast: “This is the equivalent of 18 – 55 kilotons of TNT or somewhere between one and five times the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. Right before the descending rubble of the WTC impacted the Earth it had about 250 to 420 GJ of kinetic energy.”
Because the rubble wasn’t being created by the Work of the collapse; the rubble was created by the Work of God; right?
Slartibartfast: “As the rubble impacted the Earth, this kinetic energy caused a seismic event of magnitude 2.1 and the sound of the collapse was as loud as a rocket engine and lasted for one minute.”
And you precluded the use of explosives in the basements of the buildings causing the 2.1 Richter how? Oh, that’s right. You didn’t exclude the possibility; you just threw that assumption on top of your 17.4% assumption.
You’re just the logic maven; aren’t you?
Slartibartfast: “The rest of the kinetic energy was converted into about 240 – 415 GJ of energy, the equivalent of 50 – 90 kilotons of TNT and enough energy to liquify 270 to 455 metric tons of iron at room temperature.”
Thanks for the equivalent alert; but still waiting on that assumed conversion mechanism of yours.
Once again: How many joules does it take to ‘liquify’ one kg of steel? And at what velocity must one kg of steel need to fall in order for it to ‘liquify?’ — U=mgh?
Slartibartfast: “The debris landed mainly in a cross-shaped pattern centered on the footprint of the WTC and extending 300 to 400 meters from the footprint. If this thermal energy were
Seeing you YET AGAIN failed to account for the method of conversion of your miraculous amount of Ke available into heat, after your deus ex machina explanation of the Work required for shredding the building, I’ll have to end my little trip down the rabbit hole with you here.
“I used a range of 10-13s for the collapse in my calculations. It is not correct to say, “We know that gravity would have taken the building down in about 9.2 seconds.”. Free fall from the height of the WTC takes 9.18s.”
Slarti, I don’t want to be accused of not giving you all the benefit I can. I’ll use 13 seconds for the time it took the building to collapse, and 9.2 seconds for free fall. I’ll completely ignore any drag by the air.
13 – 9.2 = 3.8 seconds to break the floors free.
Robert,
You’re nowhere near the size limit of posts on this site (if there is one). I’ve written posts 10 times as long as yours on this thread.
Robert,
I used a range of 10-13s for the collapse in my calculations. It is not correct to say, “We know that gravity would have taken the building down in about 9.2 seconds.”. Free fall from the height of the WTC takes 9.18s.
Robert,
Using 398 GJ of GPE we find that there was 65-200 GJ available for the collapse (the equivalent of 15-45 metric tons of TNT) and 190 – 330 GJ of thermal heating, enough to liquify 210 – 360 metric tons of iron.
(Continued)
We know that gravity would have taken the building down in about 9.2 seconds.
Before I continue, what is the general consensus as to the actual time it took for the building to collapse?
The total potential energy above grade is 3.98 x 10^11 J. Here’s where I get my numbers. http://www.journalof911studies.com/letters/wtc_mass_and_energy.pdf
Why is this calculation of GPE so important? It demonstrates the problems associated with making the math fit the outcome, rather than seeing if the outcome complies with the math. When we remove 20% of the GPE it leaves no energy available to break the floors free or to pulverize the concrete (unless we remove energy at some other stage). I’m sure Slarti won’t mind if I take it out of the rubble.
The size of the rubble is very important. It takes much more energy to turn concrete into 10-100 micron pieces than it does to split a 1 cu. ft. piece into two pieces. It is estimated that it would take about 17% of the GPE to perform this task. Don’t worry, we still have .4% of the GPE available to break the floors loose.
Byron said “Design is about 0.42 of ultimate or 0.66 of yield which is what we usually talk about when we design something.” Let’s use that number. The greatest design load would be the live load. To calculate this we take the dead load and add it to the service live load. The average is 331,000,000 kg. The average floor size is 320,000 square meters. That results in 1034 kg/m^2 or 212 psf. Let’s not forget about that safety margin. 1034 x .66 = 682.44 (we’ll just call it 682 to keep the numbers whole). We add the safety margin to the live total to get 1716 kg/m^2.
We know that some of the floors were damaged, but we also know that most were not. Our ultimate goal is to determine how much energy was used to break the floors loose. I’m going to consider that 10% of the load bearing capacity (including the safety margin) was lost; leaving us with 90%= 1544 kg/m^2.
To calculate the amount of work (energy expended) we need to estimate how long it took to break each floor loose.
(I’m not finished. I know wordpress kills posts that are too long. I’ll continue in another post)
From Wikipedia:
“Specialists in structural mechanics and structural engineering generally accept the model of a fire-induced, gravity-driven collapse of the World Trade Center buildings, an explanation that does not involve the use of explosives.[8][62][page needed] Northwestern University Professor of Civil Engineering Zdeněk Bažant, who was the first to offer a published peer reviewed theory of the collapses, wrote “a few outsiders claiming a conspiracy with planted explosives” as an exception.[63] Bažant and Verdure trace such “strange ideas” to a “mistaken impression” that safety margins in design would make the collapses impossible. One of the effects of a more detailed modeling of the progressive collapse, they say, could be to “dispel the myth of planted explosives”. Indeed, Bažant and Verdure have proposed examining data from controlled demolitions in order to better model the progressive-collapse of the towers, suggesting that progressive collapse and controlled demolition are not two separate modes of failure (as the controlled demolition conspiracy theory assumes).[8]
Thomas Eagar, a professor of materials science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also dismissed the controlled demolition conspiracy theory.[9] Eagar remarked, “These people (in the 9/11 truth movement) use the ‘reverse scientific method.’ They determine what happened, throw out all the data that doesn’t fit their conclusion, and then hail their findings as the only possible conclusion.”[64]
Preparing a building for a controlled demolition takes considerable time and effort.[65] The tower walls would have have to be opened on dozens of floors.[3] Thousands of pounds of explosives, fuses and ignition mechanisms would need to be snuck past security and placed in the towers[3][66] without the tens of thousands of people working in the World Trade Center noticing.[65][41][67][66][68][1] Referring to a conversation with Stuart Vyse, a professor of psychology, an article in the Hartford Advocate asks, “How many hundreds of people would you need to acquire the explosives, plant them in the buildings, arrange for the airplanes to crash […] and, perhaps most implausibly of all, never breathe a single word of this conspiracy?”[69]”
Bob,
I showed that the ‘natural collapse’ theory is plausible. The next step would be to show that it is plausible that the plane impacts were the sole cause of the collapse. (I’m not going to do it, I’ve got other plans once I get my hands on Buddha’s hat of probability. Bwa Ha Ha Ha!) And don’t give me ‘It was designed to withstand such an impact’. That design was never tested before 9/11. Remember, the Titanic was designed to be unsinkable and the Tacoma Narrows Bridge wasn’t exactly functioning within design specs on November 7, 1940…
Gyges: “That’s a nice dodge, but the question isn’t “is the 9/11 Commission Report accurate?” The question is “what makes the existence of X more logically necessary than Y?”
I’m not dodging anything Gyges.
Gyges: “The first step in “figuring out what’s true” is coming up with a theory. The second is testing the theory against reality. Then you make the changes necessary to make the theory mesh with reality.”
Not when you’re faced with an existing theory that’s been accepted at face value without question. In that instance you first check whether the theory is refutable/falsifiable, and then you set out to do just that. If the theory is falsifiable and therefore testable, and it does all as promised, then the theory stands; if not, well…
Gyges: “If you’re correct you should be able to come up with an answer as to why the presence of a conspiracy (I’m using the term conspiracy as short hand for an intentional placing, for the reason of demolishing the building, the other factor(s) you think are responsible for the destruction of the buildings in question. If you feel that the collapse was caused by an unintentional act, then I apologize for my assumption)” is a better fit against reality than a theory without one.
Investigation into the crime of conspiracy is a different process than checking the validity of a scientific theory. Once again, according to the law of parsimony, should the proving false of a scientific theory of the collapses require other investigations, such as the investigation into a possible conspiracy, then so be it. There’s something to be said about not getting ahead of yourself.
Gyges: With one caveat, better fit doesn’t mean fits better with some things and worse with others, it means fits better with some thing and just as well with the others. Thus what makes a conspiracy more logically necessary to a complete theory than a non-conspiracy?
Once again, you could make speculation upon speculation based on hunches, but without starting with a foundation as to why ‘the official story doesn’t fit,’ what’s the point?
A couple of notes on my analysis:
From Wikipedia:
“At 439 feet (134 m) and 2,200,000 square feet (204,000 m2), the J. L. Hudson Department Store and Addition is the tallest steel framed building and largest single structure ever imploded.[4]
It takes several weeks or months to prepare a building for implosion. All items of value, such as copper wiring, are stripped from a building. Some materials must be removed, such as glass that can form deadly projectiles, and insulation that can scatter over a wide area. Non-load bearing partitions and drywall are removed.[5] Selected columns on floors where explosives will be set are drilled and nitroglycerin and TNT are placed in the holes. Smaller columns and walls are wrapped in detonating cord. The goal is to use as little explosive as possible; only a few floors are rigged with explosives, so that it is safer (fewer explosives) and less costly. The areas with explosives are covered in thick geotextile fabric and fencing to absorb flying debris.[5] Far more time-consuming than the demolition itself is the clean-up of the site, as the debris is loaded into trucks and hauled away.”
I have done another rough calculation and determined that powering the flux capacitor for seven minutes would be capable of sending the DeLorean 15,000 years into the future (or the past) – be sure to remember your Morlock repellent or extra fuel (depending on your direction of travel).
Byron,
Yesterday, you posted that you had calculated it would take 683,000 Joules to melt 1 kg of steel at room temperature. I was using a figure of around 900,000 Joules and I thought you might like to know how I got that number. The paper Robert posted gave the specific heat of iron as 450 Joules per kg C at room temperature and 720 at 1400 C. I assumed this was a linear function and integrated it from room temp to 1535 to determine the energy needed to heat a block of iron from room temp to the melting point and added on the 272,000 Joule heat of fusion.
Buddha,
I’m not offended by your skepticism (although I don’t share it). No analysis can rule out controlled demolition, I just showed that there is enough energy involved to account for observed effects without controlled demolition. And I’m not going to calculate the odds for you (at least until Fineous Fingers returns from stealing the hat of probability for me ;-)).
I have to say a couple of things.
Good work fellas.
and
Sequence.
None of these analyses have answered the improbability of a symmetrical result of a random event.
Even if every joule is accounted for (not possible), time is still my issue. The hook on which hangs the hat of probability (that’s NOT a D&D treasure item for you gamers reading this).
Until either someone shows me the work or unless I suddenly get the urge to spend a day or two working out the compound probability, you’ll still have to file me under “skeptic”. I admit it’s a gut feeling. I admit this may be because I’m equation lazy. Skepticism is like agnosticism. I think I’ll retain mine. And for these reasons:
Not all opinions are binary. 1/0/N. Or in the parlance of game theory 1/-1/0.
The multiverse is one giant probability engine. All outcomes are possible and according to Everett and Schrödinger all outcomes happen. As important as Newtonian physics is to checking if there was sufficient energy to cause collapse, it doesn’t address likelihood. Time and probability has always been my grind.
Physics, despite appearances and being a contender to the throne, is not really the King of Nature. (Yes, I know both Slarti and Bob will be taking exception to this.) Physics is the Prince. And physics as we understand it is only the Prince on this membrane. He’s a powerful prince. Prince-Regent but technically not the King everywhere. In his realm, this universe, he is all powerful as constrained by the nature of spacetime on this membrane. But he is not all powerful in the context of M-theory. Probability can be applied to any data set – even a data set from a universe operating under a different physics provided we have enough context to gauge those alien probabilities.
Probability is the true King of Nature. From the probability of uneven initial matter distribution creating the universe shaped as we currently see it to the probability that two gametes will join to form a new and distinctly different creature from the parents. When everything is possible? Probability is King in ALL universes.
Einstein was wrong and Heisenberg and Everett showed it. God not only plays dice with the universe, He plays dice with all universes. I’ve still seen nothing that convinces me the dice in this instant are not peculiar. Possibly loaded. But when one cannot have certainty one way or the other, I’ve found skepticism the best retreat until all pertinent questions are answered.
So I’ll sit over here in the Skeptics Corner until someone proves a symmetrical outcome from a asymmetrical event is more likely than an asymmetrical outcome. I’ve said all along I’m just not interested enough to invest the time in the math work and that I’m working on instinct. Part of that disinterest comes from my earlier Christ analogy (What difference does it make?). My instinct still says “possible but not probable”. While you both (Bob and Slarti) shined quite a bit of physics light on the subject (thank you both for doing so much “grunt” work) and as a consequence made this one of the more interesting threads in a long time, I’m still going to play Switzerland based on what I have just said about the nature of probability as it apples to the multiverse.
Slarti:
you are my hero:-)
Great synopsis, I am convinced. Planes brought the towers down and controlled demolition is out of the question.
I also meant to say that the flux capacitor could be powered for nearly 7 MINUTES, not seconds. Now I’m starting to get annoyed with myself…
I accidentally used ‘kiloton’ instead of ‘metric ton’ – sorry, it’s been a long day. I should really know better when I’m getting 5-10 times the energy of Little Boy…
The conversion factor for Joules to tons of TNT is wrong, so ignore the TNT or Hiroshima equivalents. Nothing else is effected.
Okay. I’m finished. The model could be made more specific, but I think that this gives a good general idea of the various energies involved.
First, take a minute to think of the heroes of 9/11 – the men and women of NYPD and NYFD and the passengers on United Flight 93.
Assumptions:
GPE of WTC1 = WTC2 = 500 GJ (gigajoules) (From here on out, I will just refer to WTC or ‘the tower’)
Dimensions of WTC: 421m x 64m x 64m
The collapse of WTC did not involve added explosives
All of the simplifying assumptions that I have previously specified
The collapse of WTC registered 2.1 on the richter scale
The collapse of WTC was as loud as a rocket engine or the Krakatoa eruption from 100 milies away
The sound of the collapse lasted for 1 minute
The thermal characteristics of iron (specific heat and heat of fusion) from the paper that Robert linked to are correct
A metric ton of TNT is equivalent to 4.6 MJ (megaJoules)
It requires 1.21 gigawatts to power the flux capacitor (I have no idea what this translates into in terms of years traveled in time
‘Little Boy’ had a yield of 13-18 kilotons
room temperature is 68 F
I am happy to change any of these assumptions for justified reasons.
I accounted for energy in the following forms:
GPE
KE
thermal energy in the rubble
seismic energy
sonic energy
energy to reduce the building to rubble and create the pyroclastic flow
I assert that the amount of other forms of energy present in the collapse of WTC are much smaller than any of these forms (except sonic energy, it’s a wuss). If you feel otherwise, please explain what form of energy I’m neglecting and why that energy is relevant on a scale measured in GJ.
Depending on the time required for the collapse (free fall requires 9.18s), the various quantities change. I used a range of 10s to 13s for these calculations – longer time means more energy went into collapsing the building and shorter time means more energy went into heat in the rubble.
On the morning of September 11, there was half a terrajoule of gravitational potential energy in the WTC, the equivalent of over 100 kilotons of TNT (5 – 10 times the energy released by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima) or enough energy to power the flux capacitor for nearly seven seconds (Doc Brown only needed the duration of a lightning strike to send Marty forward 30 years). This energy exists to this day, this is my best guess as to where it went.
Somewhere between 80 to 250 GJ went in to collapsing the building, pulverizing debris, and the pyroclastic flow. This is the equivalent of 18 – 55 kilotons of TNT or somewhere between one and five times the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. Right before the descending rubble of the WTC impacted the Earth it had about 250 to 420 GJ of kinetic energy. As the rubble impacted the Earth, this kinetic energy caused a seismic event of magnitude 2.1 and the sound of the collapse was as loud as a rocket engine and lasted for one minute. The rest of the kinetic energy was converted into about 240 – 415 GJ of energy, the equivalent of 50 – 90 kilotons of TNT and enough energy to liquify 270 to 455 metric tons of iron at room temperature. The debris landed mainly in a cross-shaped pattern centered on the footprint of the WTC and extending 300 to 400 meters from the footprint. If this thermal energy were distributed uniformly over a 300 meter square region, it would have a density of 270 – 460 Joules per square centimeter. If this region were covered by a solid plate of iron 79 cm thick (weighing one kilogram per square centimeter), it would raise the temperature between 0.6 and 1 C. If it were distributed over the footprint of the building, it would yield 6 – 10,000 J/cm^2, enough to raise the temperature of our block of iron by 13 – 23 C. I think these are reasonable guesses as to upper and lower bounds of energy density, with the proviso that I wouldn’t be surprised in the distribution was very non-uniform (and highest) at the center of the footprint.
Given these numbers, the fact that there were multi-fuel fires both before and after the collapse, and that post-collapse conditions make exothermic reactions extremely likely in the rubble heap it seems reasonable to conclude that there was sufficient energy to account for the observed facts of the collapse as well as the heat and molten metal present for some time after 9/11.
Okay Bob and Robert, go ahead and tell me how stupid I am and how I have absolutely no understanding of the physics of the situation. Everyone else: What do you think?
Bob,
That’s a nice dodge, but the question isn’t “is the 9/11 Commission Report accurate?” The question is “what makes the existence of X more logically necessary than Y?”
The first step in “figuring out what’s true” is coming up with a theory. The second is testing the theory against reality. Then you make the changes necessary to make the theory mesh with reality. If you’re correct you should be able to come up with an answer as to why the presence of a conspiracy (I’m using the term conspiracy as short hand for an intentional placing, for the reason of demolishing the building, the other factor(s) you think are responsible for the destruction of the buildings in question. If you feel that the collapse was caused by an unintentional act, then I apologize for my assumption) is a better fit against reality than a theory without one. With one caveat, better fit doesn’t mean fits better with some things and worse with others, it means fits better with some thing and just as well with the others. Thus what makes a conspiracy more logically necessary to a complete theory than a non-conspiracy?
Bob,
I’m not asking for your professional services, you are asking for mine.
Slartibartfast: “Observational evidence seems to contradict this.”
Actually, there’s a clear shift in angular momentum in Tower 2; halting what is clearly a toppling of the tower.