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
Buddha,
I was just quoting Bob’s reference to you. If anyone is guilty of putting words in your mouth it is him, not me. I don’t believe that I referred to you at all in any of my three recent posts (unless you count my comment about awaiting the judges’ scores on round 2). I consider you a ‘friendly’ as well, but please do not accuse me of doing something that I did not do. I did not try, nor do I want to draw you into the ring for tactical or other reasons. I think my posts show that I am capable of answering Bob’s arguments on my own and while you are free to comment as you wish, I have no interest in misrepresenting your position in any way (and I don’t believe that I have – if you can show me where I did, I will apologize). I don’t believe that I have wronged you here so if you feel otherwise, please tell me why.
As for ‘order out of chaos’, I disagree with your interpretation, but that’s all it is – a disagreement. I have my opinion based on my reasoning (and I don’t feel that I’m ignoring this, I just don’t don’t think that there is unnatural spontaneous symmetry there) and you have your opinion based on your reasoning. It is unlikely that either of us could convince the other to change their mind and I have nothing but a heuristic argument as evidence that I am correct. Odds are that neither of us will get bored enough to do the probabilities (pun intended), so I will just respect your right to your own opinion while exerting the same right myself. If you still feel that I have disrespected Professor Turley’s dojo, please explain why so I may either defend myself or apologize.
Sorry to hear that your new year’s eve sucked – I hope the rest of your year is better.
Yeah, I finished the book I had started before Thanksgiving while up at hospital so I borrowed the last two Dark Tower books from a cousin. I’ll probably only finish one before getting back, but I have them both on the shelf already at home. Like I’ll get a lot of reading done once I hit town. I’ll be busier than a one legged man at an ass kicking contest that first week back.
You did not tell me you were in the house? Going to turn a few pages tonight?
AY,
No swamp ratting tonight. Too tired and fighting a bit of a cold from being out in the crappy cold rain NY Eve. It was horrible. I am just doing a quick read of the news and e-mail before bed and a book.
Buddhapest,
Get a Life and its time to take that stupid looking tin foil hat off. New Years is over unless you are waiting for VDay so you and your sweets can wear it together. And celebrate the Chinese New Year of the Metal Tiger. Bong, Bong, Bong?
Only kidding. Whats happening in the Bogey Bayous? You swap ratting?
Ahhhh Buddha….no matter the distance or the medium, you always leave me with a smile, and the knowledge that I am much better off staying on your good side!
Slarti,
“And the reason you and Buddha were ‘celebrating the Comet of Kahoutek’ and all that other meteor cosmik debris was what??”
I didn’t read past that. Why? Because I am out of this conversation having said my piece. You were wrong about inelastic explosions and I’m sure you are wrong about order from disorder. It’s called a disagreement. If you have a problem with that, it’s your problem, but my adjunct to this conversation ended some time ago. I said my piece. You said yours (which did NOTHING to dispel my questions except be dismissive and evasive).
I will not be drawn back into this. Why?
Because I don’t care about the KE or PE ultimately.
Not a damn bit.
I care about the orderly result of a chaotic event.
The Anomaly.
You know. That mathematical elephant in the room you choose to ignore or gloss over. That was my point when I started and my point when I left. That’s my only point now related to the WTC: the order of the fall belies the chaos of its inception. End of line. My stance is no more complicated than that.
However . . .
You especially want to leave me out of this if you are going to put words in my mouth. It’s rude to do to someone supposedly a friend. The assumptions were one thing. That above? That was something else, Slarti. Are you just trying to piss me off? It’s called drawing in a third or – as some call it – a “cheap ass tactic”. You only do it when you are either weak, need a foil or wish to cloud the field with extra players (a dilution tactic). You might want to reconsider that approach with me. Just because I consider you a friendly doesn’t mean I won’t tear into you for that kind of crap. That was amateur night in the argument department. If you don’t respect the dojo, the dojo won’t respect you. If you are not a martial artist, ask one. They’ll be glad to explain the concept. I am one of those who considers argument exactly that: a form of martial art. You could have phrased your attack on Bob’s position without mentioning me. You want to argue with Bob, knock yourself out. He’s still in the ring. But when I stepped out, I stepped out. My decision. Not yours. Not Bob’s. Mine. But when you are in the ring and throw something at someone outside the ring? See the dojo comment above. It was sloppy at best and stupid at worst. Since I don’t think you are stupid, I’m opting for a sloppy tactical decision on your part. But it was your decision.
Just like my decision is now not to be baited back into this topic. Why? Same reason I left the earlier. Because you guys are arguing about the gun. I’m questioning the magic bullet. I’ve said my piece (which has not been refuted in any scientific manner) and I don’t like repeating myself.
That is all I have to say about this matter and I will not post again on this thread. Sure I’ll read what you and Bob go back and forth with (just like I’ll go back and finish reading your posts now) – it’s a hoot, but if the topic comes up in the future? Unless I get REALLY bored and do the probabilities myself? I’m simply going to restate some version of what I have already said.
Happy New Year.
Bob,
Just to further emphasize my point about kinetic energy being converted to heat, this is a quote from the ‘Imapct_(mechanics)’ entry of Wikipedia:
“At normal speeds, during a perfectly inelastic collision, an object struck by a projectile will deform, and this deformation will absorb most, or even all, of the force of the collision. Viewed from the conservation of energy perspective, the kinetic energy of the projectile is changed into heat and sound energy, as a result of the deformations and vibrations induced in the struck object.”
Now that I’ve provided more evidence of what conservation of energy implies for this event and (hopefully) convinced you that the gravitational potential energy of the towers was a source of a large amount of thermal energy in the rubble, I’ll tackle your whole argument in the context of Ockham’s Razor:
It is necessary to account for thermal energy resulting from the conversion of kinetic energy via impact. It is necessary to account for thermal energy resulting from the impact of the jetliners. It is necessary to account for thermal energy resulting from the bending and shearing of materials during the collapse. It is necessary to account for thermal energy resulting from the burning of materials known to be present in the towers or airplanes given the observed fact of fires both before and after the collapse. It is necessary to account for thermal energy resulting from exothermic reactions that could have occurred between materials present in the debris in light of the conditions present in the debris. To assume that explosives added to the heat present in the rubble is multiplying entities beyond necessity – you know what Ockham said about that. To quote Isaac Newton, “We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. Therefore, to the same natural effects we must, so far as possible, assign the same causes.” I’m trying to account for all of the causes that we know to be present. You are trying to add in a cause that is not necessary (in my opinion) to explain appearances. I have given extensive and detailed analysis in support of my opinion. You have done absolutely nothing to support your opinion that added heat from explosives/incendiaries is necessary to explain appearances except to ignorantly and baselessly attack my analysis of the physics involved. Your only evidence of the use of incendiary/explosive devices is a residue consisting of elements present in large quantity in the debris. All of this leads me to believe that Ockham’s razor favors my theory over yours.
Wikipedia says:
“In science, Occam’s razor is used as a heuristic (rule of thumb) to guide scientists in the development of theoretical models rather than as an arbiter between published models.[4][5] In the scientific method, Occam’s razor is not considered an irrefutable principle of logic, and certainly not a scientific result.[6][7][8][9]”
This is the sense in which I used Ockham’s razor. In order to decide if I should believe in the controlled demolition theory or the impact-fire theory, I considered the implications of both theories and chose the impact-fire theory as being favored by this principle.
Finally, I’d like to ask exactly how your theory that explosives/incendiaries were required to account for observations is falsifiable. In truth, while I have a falsifiable theory supported by scientific evidence which is favored by Ockham’s razor, you have an unscientific theory which cannot be falsified and the only quality that your arguments have in abundance is hypocrisy.
I await the judges’ scores for round two…
Okay, now that I’ve made it clear where I stand on the physics of collisions, I’ll tackle the rest of the questions in Bob’s post:
Bob posted:
“Round two?
Slartibartfast:
“I have never, in this entire thread, suggested that the steel beams of the WTC were melted by the KE of impact. I have said that this could have contributed to melting them (which it could, since it adds heat). In fact, the biggest delta-T I have suggested for iron via the force of impact is about 20 degrees C. All I have said is that ‘natural’ processes could have led to molten steel (the KE of impact is really all about general heat in the rubble pile – it added a lot, and it is not credible to thinks that there could have been enough explosives in the building to significantly increase it).”
You never suggested that the Ke of impact caused the steel to melt? Really? And the reason you and Buddha were ‘celebrating the Comet of Kahoutek’ and all that other meteor cosmik debris was what?? When you start tossing joules about and assuming the complete availability of Pe to be converted to Te by question begging and discussing meteors, exactly what else could you be implying?”
I remember my dad taking me to the MSU observatory see comet Kahoutek when I was a child – I thought that it was very cool.
You are committing the ultimate in question begging by asserting that the heat seen in the rubble can only be accounted for by thermite (or thermate or some other phlebotinum) without first determining how much heat would be expected from sources known to be present. I have used the principle of conservation of energy to estimate the amount of thermal energy in the rubble of the WTC that was originally stored as gravitational potential energy. I haven’t said anything more specific than this energy ended up as heat ‘in the rubble’, excepting that the energy that went into bending and shearing the structural steel remained in said steel (as heat). As I mentioned in my last post both the WTC collapse and a meteor’s impact are examples of collisions and therefore governed by the same laws of physics. I have given enough information for you to repeat my calculations if you wish and multiple references that demonstrate that I am using the physics in an appropriate way.
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “1. Kinetic energy from the plane impact – this kinetic energy mostly became thermal energy just as the KE in the descending rubble did.”
There you go again.”
Yes, there I go again obeying conservation of energy. If I’m wrong, where did the energy go? If you can’t answer that, you don’t have a theory that can refute mine.
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “2. Multi-fuel fires in the impact zone – fires certainly would have added heat to the steel and the fact that there were many different substances burning opens the door to synergistic effects that would allow them to burn hotter that single-fuel fires (hot enough to melt steel – probably not, but hotter than you would calculate from a single-fuel fire).”
Single fuel, multi-fuel, just how long do you expect diffuse hydrocarbon flames to last in a pile of oxygen deprived rubble? Christ, the explosions during the collapse were probably sufficient to ‘blow them out’ (as oil well fires are extinguished)”
There was an observed fireball as well as smoke and fire before the collapse. The article that you referred me to as evidence of ‘molten metal’ talked about fires in the rubble – if that’s not credible evidence, then you’ve been wasting everyone’s time.
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast:
“3. Shearing/Bending during the collapse – For me, this is the prime suspect for melting energy. When a steel beam is bent, the kinetic energy used to bend the beam is transformed into thermal energy in the beam via internal friction i.e. while the beam is being bent, it is also being heated. Since steel loses strength as it gets heated this is a likely explanation of why failure occurred at lower energies than Robert calculated. There were steel beams bent into the shape of horseshoes in the collapse – this requires a lot of energy, hence generating a lot of heat in the steel.”
[…]
Further, the work put into bending & shearing the steel would never be sufficient to melt it. And if you really need the math before you concede such a ubiquitous point, may I remind you that you’ve conveniently removed the TIME factor from the equation Q=mc(delta-T). 16 seconds of bending and shearing DIFFERENT SUCCESSIVE PIECES OF STEEL will create a pile of molten metal lasting up to six months?”
Kinetic energy provides power to forces which do work bending and shearing steel beams, the kinetic energy is thereby converted into (mostly) thermal energy in the beams. The magnitude of this thermal energy can be determined by multiplying the force involved by the distance over which it acts (time is not a factor here – the larger the force is, the more heat it generates – and the shorter the duration of the event). This calculation applies independently to each bending and shearing event.
I tried to make a rough calculation of the kinetic energy converted to heat in bending or shearing steel I-beams, but I couldn’t find the requisite material properties, so I will just note that nearly all of the energy which powered the work of shearing and bending steel beams remained in those beams as thermal energy. There was as much as a quarter teraJoule involved in bending and shearing beams (and otherwise destroying the structure of the towers), pulverizing the materials, and ejecting the pyroclastic flow.
Bob said:
“And then you chime in “oh don’t forget the fires…” What fires? The fires that kept magically burning from the remains of the magic carpets the hijackers were carrying with them?”
Fires were observed before the collapse and were seen in the rubble according to eyewitnesses accounts that you are asserting as proof of molten metal.
Bob said:
‘And how could you believe that your explanation qualifies as scientific, when it fails the very first test of the scientific method? IOW, your theory for the existence of molten metal at ground zero existing for six months, employing ONLY the twin towers for your ‘theory’, falls flat on its falsified face when we look to WTC 7. And then to stand back and proclaim you won’t complete your argument unless you get paid? What’s the intellectual difference between that and closing your eyes and saying “you can’t see me.”’
My explanation is both falsifiable* and unfalsified. I asked (and answered) the question: ‘What were the sources of heat in the rubble of the WTC given the ‘natural’ theory of collapse?’ It is my opinion that the sources I identified (and partially quantified) are sufficient to account for observations. For various reasons, answering the same question for the collapse of WTC7 is more difficult (and you don’t get two for the price of one, either). It took me a significant amount of work for several days to complete the analysis above. I’m not willing to undertake the more difficult task of modeling the WTC7 collapse for a person who is baselessly mocking my previous analysis when I’m confident (based on my knowledge of the structure/damage/conditions in WTC7) that it will end up showing the same thing. I don’t think that you would be willing to do 10-20 hours of legal research to refute someone who keeps telling you that you don’t understand the Constitution. (And let’s take a moment here to appreciate the efforts of Vince Treacy has put into just that on the birther threads.) This is not a defect of my analysis – I am not asserting anything about WTC7, I am simply not including it in my analysis. I am, however, capable of including WTC7, which I am willing to do if I’m paid for it (and you’re free to mock it as much as you’d like as soon as the check clears). I’m looking at two related events and choosing to analyze one of them and not the other. In no way am I being intellectually dishonest.
*Proof that the energy that I calculate as available is insufficient to break loose the floors or eject the pyroclastic flow are but a few of the many ways in which my analysis could be falsified.
I said:
“(And incidentally, steel will liquify on impact, you just have to drop it from 100 km up or so…)”
Bob replied:
“Let’s begin with the concluding parenthetical of yours; shall we? Steel will never liquify on impact with planet Earth. NEVER. It may burn up in the atmosphere if you drop it from a high enough altitude, but it will NEVER liquify due to IMPACT; the gravitational acceleration of Earth and the terminal velocity barrier for free falling bodies simply will not allow a Mach 3.94 collision with Earth.”
You’re just wrong here. If by ‘freely falling’ you mean hitting the earth at escape velocity or higher (which I clearly did when I was talking about impactors)`then it is common for, say, iron asteroids to liquify or even vaporize on impact. And if were talking about astronomical object from the solar system colliding with the Earth, the velocity of the collision is somewhere between escape velocity for the Earth (~11 km/s) and 70 km/s (for an object that while crashing into the sun gets blind-sided by the Earth in its orbit and crashes into the Earth. If the object is big enough to make it through the atmosphere, then while there may be some heating and ablation due to friction with the atmosphere, the object doesn’t really slow down significantly in the 10 seconds or less that it is passing through the 100 km or so of meaningful atmosphere (and everything I’m saying applies equally well to the moon). Basically if something is going fast enough by the time it reaches the atmosphere, it wont have time to get slowed down to terminal velocity by friction.
Moving on to consider what happens when an object hits a planetary body at 11 km/s or faster…
Wikipedia says (in the ‘impact crater’ entry):
“The damage produced by the shock wave raises the temperature of the material. In all but the smallest impacts this increase in temperature is sufficient to melt the impactor, and in larger impacts to vaporize most of it and to melt large volumes of the target. As well as being heated…”
And in the entry on Meteor Crater in Arizona, it says:
“The object that excavated the crater was a nickel-iron meteorite about 50 meters (54 yards) across, which impacted the plain at a speed of several kilometers per second. The speed of the impact has been a subject of some debate. Modelling initially suggested that the meteorite struck at a speed of up to 20 kilometers per second (45,000 mph), but more recent research suggests the impact was substantially slower, at 12.8 kilometers per second (28,600 mph). It is believed that about half of the impactor’s 300,000 tonnes (330,000 short tons) bulk was vaporized during its descent, before it hit the ground.[7]
The impactor itself was mostly vaporized; very little of the meteorite remained within the pit that it had excavated.[8]”
It is clear that impactors don’t just melt, they actually vaporize. Also if you look at the following figure:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Craterstructure.gif
You will see the black region on the figure that the legend indicates as ‘impact melt’. In a complex crater (like Chicxulub crater) this covers most of the surface area contained in the crater (25,000 square kilometers for Chicxulub).
I’m not just trying to make a debating point here. I’m treating both an impactor hitting the Earth and the collapse of the WTC as collisions (which they both are) and applying the physics of collisions in order to estimate the magnitude of the results. Although these events are very different in magnitude, exactly the same laws of physics are used to describe both events. Just as the Chicxulub impactor released energy equivalent to one billion megatons of TNT (which mostly ended up as thermal energy), the collapse of each of the twin towers converted nearly half a teraJoule of gravitational potential energy into mainly thermal energy in the rubble pile. I don’t know how big a temperature increase in the rubble pile as a whole that this translates into and I imagine this energy would be ditributed very non-uniformly in general, but this is an enormous amount of heat and certainly suggests that the center of the rubble pile would be hotter than might otherwise be suspected.
I’ll tackle more of your post a little later.
Bob,
It will be a couple of days before I can start round two -I will defend what I said, but for now I’m going to wrap my towel around my head and say ‘you can’t see me”. Hope whatever holidays you celebrate are going well.
Round two?
Slartibartfast:
“I have never, in this entire thread, suggested that the steel beams of the WTC were melted by the KE of impact. I have said that this could have contributed to melting them (which it could, since it adds heat). In fact, the biggest delta-T I have suggested for iron via the force of impact is about 20 degrees C. All I have said is that ‘natural’ processes could have led to molten steel (the KE of impact is really all about general heat in the rubble pile – it added a lot, and it is not credible to thinks that there could have been enough explosives in the building to significantly increase it).”
You never suggested that the Ke of impact caused the steel to melt? Really? And the reason you and Buddha were ‘celebrating the Comet of Kahoutek’ and all that other meteor cosmik debris was what?? When you start tossing joules about and assuming the complete availability of Pe to be converted to Te by question begging and discussing meteors, exactly what else could you be implying?
Slartibartfast: “1. Kinetic energy from the plane impact – this kinetic energy mostly became thermal energy just as the KE in the descending rubble did.”
There you go again.
Slartibartfast: “2. Multi-fuel fires in the impact zone – fires certainly would have added heat to the steel and the fact that there were many different substances burning opens the door to synergistic effects that would allow them to burn hotter that single-fuel fires (hot enough to melt steel – probably not, but hotter than you would calculate from a single-fuel fire).”
Single fuel, multi-fuel, just how long do you expect diffuse hydrocarbon flames to last in a pile of oxygen deprived rubble? Christ, the explosions during the collapse were probably sufficient to ‘blow them out’ (as oil well fires are extinguished)
Slartibartfast:
“3. Shearing/Bending during the collapse – For me, this is the prime suspect for melting energy. When a steel beam is bent, the kinetic energy used to bend the beam is transformed into thermal energy in the beam via internal friction i.e. while the beam is being bent, it is also being heated. Since steel loses strength as it gets heated this is a likely explanation of why failure occurred at lower energies than Robert calculated. There were steel beams bent into the shape of horseshoes in the collapse – this requires a lot of energy, hence generating a lot of heat in the steel. (And incidentally, steel will liquify on impact, you just have to drop it from 100 km up or so…)”
Let’s begin with the concluding parenthetical of yours; shall we? Steel will never liquify on impact with planet Earth. NEVER. It may burn up in the atmosphere if you drop it from a high enough altitude, but it will NEVER liquify due to IMPACT; the gravitational acceleration of Earth and the terminal velocity barrier for free falling bodies simply will not allow a Mach 3.94 collision with Earth.
Further, the work put into bending & shearing the steel would never be sufficient to melt it. And if you really need the math before you concede such a ubiquitous point, may I remind you that you’ve conveniently removed the TIME factor from the equation Q=mc(delta-T). 16 seconds of bending and shearing DIFFERENT SUCCESSIVE PIECES OF STEEL will create a pile of molten metal lasting up to six months?
And then you chime in “oh don’t forget the fires…” What fires? The fires that kept magically burning from the remains of the magic carpets the hijackers were carrying with them?
And how could you believe that your explanation qualifies as scientific, when it fails the very first test of the scientific method? IOW, your theory for the existence of molten metal at ground zero existing for six months, employing ONLY the twin towers for your ‘theory’, falls flat on its falsified face when we look to WTC 7. And then to stand back and proclaim you won’t complete your argument unless you get paid? What’s the intellectual difference between that and closing your eyes and saying “you can’t see me.”
After putting her grandchildren to bed, a grandmother changed into old slacks and a droopy blouse and proceeded to wash her hair. As she heard the children getting more and more rambunctious, her patience grew thin. Finally, she threw a towel around her head and stormed into their room, putting them back to bed with stern warnings. As she left the room, she heard the three-year-old say with a trembling voice, “Who was THAT?”
Buddha: “As tonight’s time stamps wear on, I’d be expecting a little less coherence in my answers.”
Raoul Duke: “Let’s get down to the brass tacks here… How much for the ape?”
Frank Zappa: “Goodnight Austin Texas; wherever you are!”
roflol
I promise I’ll leave the slide rule alone!
Buddha,
If you’d like, I’m a doctor and I could order you to drink as well (say, if you need a double). But remember, alcohol and mathematics DO NOT MIX! DON’T DRINK AND DERIVE!
Slarti,
Will do. Especially now that I can say it was doctor’s orders. 😉
Excellent choice of cocktail. Enjoy.
Slarti,
Agreed. That was meant as contrast data.
Buddha,
Seems reasonable to assume that wasn’t going on. Thanks for the info. The reaction that I’m talking about has iron as a solid, so it can’t require temperatures of more than 1500 deg C.