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
Robert,
Have you ever noticed how I answer your entire posts point-by-point while you choose a couple of straw men to attack that you find by misinterpreting what I say? Well, this is the last time. I’ve shown that I can answer any point you make, so from now on, I will only answer your comments if they contain a reasonable argument or are particularly inane. If I don’t answer one of your arguments, it means that I don’t consider it important or pertinent enough to debunk. Yes, that is arrogant, but I just don’t have the time to correct every silly notion you throw against the wall.
Robert said:
“No. By my reasoning, you could never use conservation of energy on anything other than an isolated system.”
The truth is that you can use conservation of energy on any system as long as you account for all energy flows into and out of the system. In the time frame I’m considering (from the initiation of the progressive failure until the rubble was at rest) no significant energy flowed into the system (remember I’m testing the hypothesis that ‘natural’ causes were sufficient, so it is appropriate to assume no explosives). I’ve accounted for energy flowing out of the system. No one has suggested a destination of energy outside the system that I haven’t accounted for. Please stop making fool of yourself.
Robert said:
“The problem is your approach. You have attempted to demonstrate energy conservation on a system of which it is not intended to apply.”
Energy is conserved universally. If we carefully account for it all (which I am), we are not violating energy conservation.
Robert said:
“The question here is whether or not there was enough available energy to perform the work needed to cause the towers to collapse due to the impact of the plane and the subsequent fires. This is simply a question of whether or not you have enough money in your wallet to pay for all the groceries in your cart.”
12 terajoules were spent on groceries (that’s a big twinkie), the grocery store (thermal energy in the rubble) has all the money now – Where do you think the money went? (Or did it leave the universe?)
Robert said:
“((((As to your attempting to call this an “isolated system”: Have you ever read a scientific demonstration of energy conservation in which the universe was claimed to be the isolated system, or did you just read of the possibility on wikipedia and adopt it?)))”
It was an (obviously unsuccessful) attempt to convince you that the law of conservation of energy can be applied (since it obviously can be applied to the universe as a whole). And no, I didn’t see it in Wikipedia, I thought it up all on my own (although it is a standard technique).
[Me] “…we may account for any energy leaving the system by subtracting it from the total.”
[Robert] “Do you read what you write? Nothing can leave an isolated system. Not energy. Not mass.”
Lately I reread everything I post twice – I know that should I make so much as a trivial misstatement that you or Bob will jump on it and that takes a lot more time to clear up. I have defined my system. I have carefully accounted for all of the energy flows out of the system (there are no significant flows of energy into the system – if you’d like to take sunshine into account, be my guest). Neither you nor Bob has suggested any legitimate energy (originating as GPE in the WTC) that I’m not accounting for (we’ll get to your notion of kinetic energy being dissipated into the atmosphere, it’s a hoot!). The main way in which energy (and mass – technically this is redundant since mass is a form of energy) leaves the system is via the pyroclastic flow and other ejected debris. If you can show that ripping loose the floors and ejecting the flow took more than 200 GJ, you will falsify my theory – but I will critique any values you give and ridiculous overestimates like 14 GJ to rip loose a floor don’t falsify anything.
Robert said:
“What is your number? Byron agreed with my number for floor load.”
Saying that under a dynamic stress of 14 GJ the floor will fail but it can withstand a lower energy impact is saying that the structure can’t withstand a 23 kiloton mass (the upper 15 stories of WTC1) impacting it at 35m/s (as if dropped from a height of over 62m) but it could possibly withstand it if it were only dropped from 60m and 50m is no problem whatsoever. It doesn’t pass the laugh test. If you do an accurate calculation (and I’m not suggesting this is a test for accuracy, just what an accurate calculation will yield) you will get a value comfortably below the 1 GJ of KE that the 23 kiloton mass had when it impacted the 94th floor. Byron can disagree with this if he likes.
[Me] “…Initially, the yield strength of a single structural beam (presumably weakened by heating and carrying additional load)…”
[Robert] “Steel is weakened by carrying additional load? Sorry. I’m not buying into that.”
Sigh. Your reading comprehension isn’t that good, is it? The parenthetical should be parsed this way:
presumably (weakened by heating) and (carrying additional load)
There were fires that were estimated to be between 700 C and 1000 C. At 700 C steel has 50-70% of the strength it has at room temperature, at 1000 C it is 10-30%. Due to damage to the surrounding structure, the beams that were being heated were also carrying a higher than normal load to make up for the missing structure. I don’t think my statement is in any way untrue.
[Me] “The initial failures do not involve shearing, but by the time the collapse had gone a dozen or so floors, there would be plenty of massive shearing forces in various directions”
[Robert] “What is the source for this force in various directions? You do realize that every different direction requires more energy? Have you come up with a method of directing this energy, or is it going to take the path of least resistance?”
It was the gravitational collapse of a freaking 110-story building – I don’t think the forces in the collapse zone were neat and orderly, do you? While the driving force was down (gravity), things were being smashed, ripped apart, and pulverized every which way.
[Me] “There was initially no horizontal momentum and the primary force (gravity) had no horizontal component, so the total horizontal momentum of the collapse would be zero. We would expect the collapse zone to ‘boil over’ and slide down the sides of the building – exactly what happened. That being said, there were plenty of lateral forces once the collapse was well underway, they were just balanced.”
[Robert] Balanced? This collapsing outer ring of the building managed to direct enough energy towards the center columns to shear them, but didn’t eject other available material outside of the building with nearly the same force? Who’s directing this storm? Somebody is directing the energy to the places it is needed the most.
The central core would have been the most resistant (followed by the perimeter which probably kept the collapse from spreading outward more than it did), but it had the next best thing to the fist of god smashing into it and it failed under that massive load. The highest energy density would be where the structure of the building was offering the most resistance to the descending debris.
[Me] “As I said before, no structure on earth could stop the collapse of a 15-story building and progressive failure is a reasonable (and favored) initiation hypothesis.”
[Robert] “Now your just making stuff up for effect.”
What structure could remain standing if a 15-story building were collapsed on top of it? The idea that if a region of the superstructure were stressed to near the point of failure then the failure of a single element and the attendant increase in stress to neighboring elements could lead to a collapse of the entire structure isn’t something I made up (I wish I had). What untrue or misleading effect do I get out of this?
[Me] “The earth (and the rubble) is being deformed upon impact by work which is converting kinetic energy into thermal energy. This generates heat in the ground below the collapse as well as in the rubble. Since this heat is at the bottom of and in the rubble pile”
[Robert] “No. The majority is transferred into kinetic energy in the air between the soil (that permits the compression) and is ejected into the atmosphere.”
This is my favorite – it’s hard to decide just how I want to tear this idiotic statement apart. Let’s count the ways:
1) Energy ejected into the atmosphere is sound, I’ve accounted for it and it isn’t all that much energy.
2) What would happen to the kinetic energy if this collision took place in a vacuum?
No atmosphere to eject that kinetic energy into, I guess the collapse will just have to keep going.
3) The air permits the compression of the soil? Just how does that work on the moon? Kinetic energy is expended to do the work of compressing the soil and is thereby dissipated in the soil.
You need to take a time out and think about this one. It’s not as bad as Bob’s suggestion that I use the backwards heat equation, but it really makes you look like you don’t understand.
Do you just read books? [I got my scientific education from all sorts of sources – I just started out with a desire to understand the universe and a facility for mathematics. If you’re interested in learning about what a scientist is like, I highly recommend the autobiography of Richard Feynman (‘Surely You Must Be Joking Mr. Feynman’). This Nobel laureate truly exemplified what it is to be a scientist.] These are not difficult deductions to make. [Yes, you seem to be having a lot of problems, though.] You seem to be anal about energy conservation. [Yeah, it’s one of the down sides to being a scientist, we tend to be picky about following physical laws.] Two things end up with all of our energy; the earth and the atmosphere. [All energy ultimately ends up as heat. You can do work with energy until it has become evenly distributed heat. Quite frequently that heat ends up in the earth or the atmosphere (like it did this time if you count the rubble pile as part of the earth.)]”
[Me] “No, I have shown myself to be a superior scientist.”
You’ve shown yourself to be an arrogant ass. [That, too. It doesn’t change the fact that I’m correct and you are not.] You need to let your argument stand on it’s own merit. [My arguments do stand on their own merits – the dozens of quotes I’ve made that neither you nor Bob has even attempted to refute, the detailed computations and explanations of the physics involved, etc. The arrogance was originally a counter to Bob’s condescending attitude and an indication that I held your misinformation in contempt, now it’s just to amuse myself.] If it is strong, others will concur. [I’ve put science out there to combat disinformation. I expect people to decide what to believe base on the relative merits of our arguments. Despite my arrogance, my arguments stand fine on their own.] Your declaration of superiority, on the basis of your own opinion of yourself warrants may preceding statement. [I probably should have said ‘I have shown myself to be THE superior scientist’ meaning that I am a better scientist than you (which shouldn’t be surprising since I am a professional scientist and you are not). I didn’t mean to imply that I was a superior person. Oh, well…]”
I know you find me arrogant and dismissive, but I’ll point out that I’ve just had to spend the better part of three hours to debunk the crap that you spewed over the course of half an hour. Stop saying such idiotic things and I’ll lighten up.
“No, I have shown myself to be a superior scientist.”
You’ve shown yourself to be an arrogant ass. You need to let your argument stand on it’s own merit. If it is strong, others will concur. Your declaration of superiority, on the basis of your own opinion of yourself warrants may preceding statement.
“The earth (and the rubble) is being deformed upon impact by work which is converting kinetic energy into thermal energy. This generates heat in the ground below the collapse as well as in the rubble. Since this heat is at the bottom of and in the rubble pile”
No. The majority is transferred into kinetic energy in the air between the soil (that permits the compression) and is ejected into the atmosphere.
Do you just read books? These are not difficult deductions to make. You seem to be anal about energy conservation. Two things end up with all of our energy; the earth and the atmosphere.
“As I said before, no structure on earth could stop the collapse of a 15-story building and progressive failure is a reasonable (and favored) initiation hypothesis.”
Now your just making stuff up for effect.
“There was initially no horizontal momentum and the primary force (gravity) had no horizontal component, so the total horizontal momentum of the collapse would be zero. We would expect the collapse zone to ‘boil over’ and slide down the sides of the building – exactly what happened. That being said, there were plenty of lateral forces once the collapse was well underway, they were just balanced.”
Balanced? This collapsing outer ring of the building managed to direct enough energy towards the center columns to shear them, but didn’t eject other available material outside of the building with nearly the same force? Who’s directing this storm? Somebody is directing the energy to the places it is needed the most.
“The initial failures do not involve shearing, but by the time the collapse had gone a dozen or so floors, there would be plenty of massive shearing forces in various directions”
What is the source for this force in various directions? You do realize that every different direction requires more energy? Have you come up with a method of directing this energy, or is it going to take the path of least resistance?
“nothing (that deserves repeating) NOTHING has been presented that would introduce a shearing force. [Initially, the yield strength of a single structural beam (presumably weakened by heating and carrying additional load)”
Steel is weakened by carrying additional load? Sorry. I’m not buying into that.
“14 Gigajoules per floor energy requirement [Which is ridiculously high for reasons I’ve given previously.”
What is your number? Byron agreed with my number for floor load.
“we may account for any energy leaving the system by subtracting it from the total.”
Do you read what you write? Nothing can leave an isolated system. Not energy. Not mass.
“By your reasoning we could never use conservation of energy.”
No. By my reasoning, you could never use conservation of energy on anything other than an isolated system.
The problem is your approach. You have attempted to demonstrate energy conservation on a system of which it is not intended to apply. The question here is whether or not there was enough available energy to perform the work needed to cause the towers to collapse due to the impact of the plane and the subsequent fires. This is simply a question of whether or not you have enough money in your wallet to pay for all the groceries in your cart.
((((As to your attempting to call this an “isolated system”: Have you ever read a scientific demonstration of energy conservation in which the universe was claimed to be the isolated system, or did you just read of the possibility on wikipedia and adopt it?)))
Robert said:
“The reason I don’t permit ground zero to be treated as an isolated system (for the purposes of applying energy conservation laws) is that it is not and never will be an isolated system. To consider it to be such is to invite fantasy into scientific analysis.”
By your reasoning we could never use conservation of energy. There were 400 GJ (dead load – live load would be significantly higher) of GPE in one of the twin towers. I assume that you will allow that this energy is conserved in the universe (if you wont, go take a freshman physics class and stop bothering me). Since it is conserved, we can account for it. Since what we are concerned about here is the thermal energy in the rubble (My intent has always been to show that significant heat in the rubble pile is what was to be expected scientifically) we may account for any energy leaving the system by subtracting it from the total. Since energy that leaves the system doesn’t return, once we’ve subtracted this energy, we can ignore it. Does that sound like fantasy to you?
Robert said:
“I surprised that you didn’t blast Slarti in your response. He deserves to be blasted. Slarti has dismissed/completely avoided all issues that defeat his analysis.”
Unlike you, Bob may have realized how far out on limb he was. I’ve been considering all of the objections you raise and refuting them point by point. This post is but the latest example of me considering a post of yours or Bob’s line by line. Find a physicist and make him read this thread (I recommend using the Clockwork Orange eye thingies…) and ask him what he thinks of the analysis I’ve presented.
Robert said:
“1. The core of the buildings consisted of vertical steel columns. [Yes, it did.] While it is possible to estimate the energy required to shear the columns (included in my 14 Gigajoules per floor energy requirement [Which is ridiculously high for reasons I’ve given previously. If you could prove it, you would falsify my model – not to mention proving that controlled demolition is impossible.]), nothing (that deserves repeating) NOTHING has been presented that would introduce a shearing force. [Initially, the yield strength of a single structural beam (presumably weakened by heating and carrying additional load) needed to be exceeded – resulting in its failure and initiating a progressive collapse. The initial failures do not involve shearing, but by the time the collapse had gone a dozen or so floors, there would be plenty of massive shearing forces in various directions] These were vertical columns. It would require a horizontal force to shear those columns. IF a horizontal force was present, in the magnitude necessary to shear the vertical columns, instantaneously, the momentum would have caused the building to continue off in that direction. We have no indication of any lateral shift during the collapse. [There was initially no horizontal momentum and the primary force (gravity) had no horizontal component, so the total horizontal momentum of the collapse would be zero. We would expect the collapse zone to ‘boil over’ and slide down the sides of the building – exactly what happened. That being said, there were plenty of lateral forces once the collapse was well underway, they were just balanced.]”
Robert said:
“As you mentioned earlier, it would take many times more vertical force to take down those columns than it would to shear them. (Your pencil example makes that easily recognizable.)”
As I said before, no structure on earth could stop the collapse of a 15-story building and progressive failure is a reasonable (and favored) initiation hypothesis.
Robert said:
“2. Slarti does not account for any deformation of the earth upon impact. He does not account for the earth being “compressible” at the surface, but not in the bedrock, when he calculates the energy necessary to generate a seismic event.”
A 2.1 seismic event is generated by converting 5.9 GJ to seismic energy. Since we are measuring the actual total energy here, nothing is being ignored. You’ll be happy to know that the other collapse registered 2.3 on the Richter scale, so that’s 12 GJ you don’t have to worry about… you’re one-thousanth of the way there! 😉 The earth (and the rubble) is being deformed upon impact by work which is converting kinetic energy into thermal energy. This generates heat in the ground below the collapse as well as in the rubble. Since this heat is at the bottom of and in the rubble pile (much of the debris fell on other rubble), I just simplified matters and said it was in the rubble pile.
Robert said:
“He does not consider the energy necessary to consider different frequencies of sound at different distances, or the effect of multiple sources. (adding a second source (and we know there were millions of sound sources at the collapse) does not provide a linear increase (decibels), but does require much more energy.)
http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-leveladding.htm”
I have made an estimate of the noise, to wit: as loud as a rocket and lasting for one minute. I think that this is a comfortable overestimate, if you think otherwise, tell me what you think is reasonable. Fair warning, my estimate only gives 60 MJ, so even a substantially louder sound isn’t going to buy you much.
Robert said:
“I could continue, but why waste my time. Slarti is not subject to peer review.”
Not formally, but as I said, I did discuss my analysis with a colleague who has a Ph.D. in physics as a reality check. What kind of reality check have you done?
Robert said:
“He has declared himself to be a superior being.”
No, I have shown myself to be a superior scientist.
Robert said:
“All he has managed to accomplish is to demonstrate his arrogance, and that he does not have what it takes to perform complex forensic analysis.”
I was doing a preliminary scientific analysis to estimate the amount of heat that we would expect to find in the rubble (sans explosives). The answer is an awful lot. I acknowledged my arrogance (as a response to Bob’s condescension) and apologized for what has been unfairly leveled in your direction. What you’re getting now, you deserve.
Robert said:
“If you throw a peanut up in the air, and it lands on the coffee table, and the table breaks, Slarti will, just like he has done here, show you that the peanut caused the table to break.”
If the peanut was carrying 12 teraJoules of energy? You bet your ass. As a thought experiment for homework, why don’t you consider what would happen if a peanut hit the Earth carrying 12 teraJoules of kinetic energy (it would be traveling at 50,000 km/s or about 1/6 the speed of light). To begin with, please explain why the peanut would instantly vaporize and something that looked an awful lot like an explosion 1/5th the size of the Hiroshima bomb would occur.
Robert said:
“Then he will declare you to be inferior because you don’t agree.”
No, I will say that you don’t understand the physics of the situation.
Robert said:
“BTW. Your pencil analogy brought it home. At that point I recognized that no source for a shearing force was present.”
As I’ve described, progressive failure is initiated by the failure of a single structural member. If you are asserting that this is impossible, you are saying that it is not possible for a beam that was carrying a load significantly greater than normal with as little as 10% of its strength remaining to have failed. If you are saying that either building should have been able to resist the gravitational collapse of its upper section, you are out of your mind.
Robert said:
“Not if it took 14 GJ per floor to take [the WTC] down. The total GPE was only enough to take out 29 floors (the reason the building stood for more than 30 years). You ran out of energy. To add insult to injury, a good amount of that energy would have had to take a 90 degree turn to shear the core columns.”
I have said that I believe that this is a significant overestimate. I have said why. None the less, if you can prove that it took 14 GJ per floor to tear loose the floors in the manner that happened on 9/11 then you will falsify my model. You will also prove that controlled demolition is impossible.
Robert said:
“Slarti, Your “tons of TNT” and “Hiroshima” references are salesmanship.”
That doesn’t change the fact that my statements about TNT and Hiroshima are accurate.
Robert said:
“That’s all. All you have have managed to accomplish is to verify that the building fell. I’ll bet you can’t even tell us how much energy was required to shear one core column.”
No, I can’t. And since nothing in my model predicts or assumes this energy (other than saying that the entire structure of a floor can’t resist a 23 kiloton mass with 1 GJ of kinetic energy), it has no relevance with which to impeach my model.
Robert:
“And what is this terajoules bullshit from the airplanes? [8 TJ (and 3 TJ for WTC2) are estimates of the heat generated by fire in the first 40 minutes after impact. Not included in this (but adding heat) is the kinetic energy of the airplane or heat generated by the fireball.] Are you trying to get the planes to perform double duty? [No.] Or are you trying to use your application of energy conservation to increase the GPE? [No, I am accounting for another acknowledged source of heat. Or are you saying there weren’t any fires after the impacts?] Heck, if we used your methods of accounting there would be no reason to look for alternate energy sources. [Here in the reality-base world we do use my method of accounting. It’s called the principle of conservation of energy.] Everything we need would be conserved. [Energy is always conserved, the problem is that when it becomes heat, it can no longer be used to do work.]”
Robert said:
“I want you to be the expert witness for a two-car head-on collision, where one car was doing 60 and the other 50. I would ask you which car was towed away with more energy.”
I actually witnessed a head on collision of this sort once. Assuming 2 cars traveling in opposite directions at 55 mph that remain together after impact, 0.6 MJ of kinetic energy is dissipated, mostly as heat in the car frames – a by-product of work done smashing the cars. That’s a lot of energy if you’re in one of the cars (and it’s doing work on you), but on the scales we’ve been talking, it’s peanuts.
Robert,
Once again, I have answered all of the issues you’ve raised in you posts. Just because you don’t like the answers (and can’t refute them) doesn’t mean I’m being dismissive, quite the opposite in fact. I have considered all of your points and found them wanting. Re-read what I’ve said. Does it sound to you like I’m making this up?
““NIST concentrated its resources on the greatest uncertainty: what initiated the collapse? It was understood that once an upper block of the building was in motion the structure below would be unable to counter the dynamic forces, and collapse would proceed to the ground.”
Doesn’t this sound awfully similar to what I’ve been saying? And how about:”
Not if it took 14 GJ per floor to take it down. The total GPE was only enough to take out 29 floors (the reason the building stood for more than 30 years). You ran out of energy. To add insult to injury, a good amount of that energy would have had to take a 90 degree turn to shear the core columns.
Slarti, Your “tons of TNT” and “Hiroshima” references are salesmanship. That’s all. All you have have managed to accomplish is to verify that the building fell. I’ll bet you can’t even tell us how much energy was required to shear one core column.
And what is this terajoules bullshit from the airplanes? Are you trying to get the planes to perform double duty? Or are you trying to use your application of energy conservation to increase the GPE? Heck, if we used your methods of accounting there would be no reason to look for alternate energy sources. Everything we need would be conserved.
I want you to be the expert witness for a two-car head-on collision, where one car was doing 60 and the other 50. I would ask you which car was towed away with more energy.
Bob and Robert,
In trying in vain to refute specific points of my argument, you may not have taken a look at the big picture lately. In case you missed it in my posts last night, with an estimate (from the article I linked) of the heat generated by fires in both towers in the first 40 minutes after impact (8 teraJoules in WTC1 and 3 teraJoules in WTC2) I’m up to something like 12 teraJoules of heat in the WTC system(both buildings) which is the equivalent of 2 kilotons of TNT or 1/5th to 1/10th the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. It is sufficient energy to raise the ENTIRE MASS of WTC1 by 549 C and WTC2 by 309 C (WTC7 had sufficient energy for a 339 C temperature rise). Mind you, that does not account for the difference between the ‘dead’ load and the ‘live’ load (people, stuff, and equipment in the building had GPE, too), the heat from the fires after the first 40 minutes, heat from the kinetic energy of the airplane impacts or the ensuing fireball (although we’ve considered the fires that were lit), heat from fires observed in the rubble, heat from exothermic reactions in the rubble (one of which occurs when water is sprayed on hot steel and in addition to heat produces hydrogen gas), not to mention another chemical reaction which occurs when water is sprayed on hot aluminum (want to bet that no water lines were broken in the airplane impacts?) and also produces hydrogen gas. I suddenly have an embarrassing wealth of thermal energy, structural steel at 10-70% of its rated strength carrying additional loads due to structural damage under circumstances where the failure of a single member would certainly initiate a progressive failure spanning the cross-section of the building*, and the x-factor that it is a certainty that there were many unusual situations in the collapse and rubble, even though individually those situations are improbable. As for WTC7, I’ve got 12,000 gallons of burnt diesel fuel (That’s 1.5 teraJoules of heat if you’re scoring at home), significant damage in the WTC1 collapse, fires burning unfought for hours on multiple floors, a ConEd substation on the first three floors, and unusual support and truss design in the area of the building that failed (not to mention the fires and reactions in the rubble and the GPE of WTC7). A collapse scenario for WTC 7 which I find reasonable can be seen at:
http://www.counterpunch.org/darkfire11282006.html
*[actually, its a lot more complicated than I have described due to the interactions of structural elements in the central core (which had been damaged and had fireproofing dislodged), the perimeter (one face of which had been severed) and the 5-story roof truss, but the principle is sound. I know this happens pretty quick, but one beam fails first – if one beam is stressed to the point of failure under the kind of catastrophic circumstances we have here (incredibly high dynamic loads) then its neighbors and ultimately the whole structure will fail as well. All three of these buildings were literally as strong as their weakest part. That wasn’t strong enough.]
My scenarios of the collapse and sources of heat in the rubble are well-reasoned, scientific, and well-supported. You have assertions that you cannot even build a reasonable theory around. You’re getting to the point where if you want significant additional heat, you’re going to need to slip an atomic explosion into the collapse unnoticed. The use of explosives to trigger the collapse is unnecessary, the use of explosives to continue the collapse goes against all of our understanding of how gravitational collapse works (and would be impossible to plant, hide, and precisely detonate and ridiculously so in the case of sufficient explosives to increase the expected heat in the rubble), and it would take 2 kilotons of TNT to merely double the thermal energy in the rubble.
Can you not see that the inclusion of explosives is multiplying entities beyond necessity?
What exactly is your theory that you think Ockham’s razor favors?
What exactly have I not taken into account?
Early in this thread you mocked Byron as being sheepish that he had supported me. I suspect that he is feeling pretty justified right now.
[Can I get an ‘amen’, Byron?]
I rest my case.
[Face Buddha and bow.]
Bob,
First, you accused me of misunderstanding Ockham’s Razor by applying it in a way which I’ve documented as standard scientific practice; then you argued that I wasn’t allowed to use a fundamental principle of physics, which was bad enough as classical mechanics is one of my favorite subjects and I know quite a bit about it; but now you have suggested I should analyze energy in a way that is mathematically unsound. I know that it is mathematically unsound because I failed my first qualifying exam due in part to not being able to prove that this particular technique was mathematically unsound. Well, I’ve passed my qualifying exam and gotten my Ph.D. and you better believe that I know how to prove this now! Let me more carefully explain what you did wrong:
Bob said:
“Did you ever, I mean EVER, consider that your beginning your analysis with the thermal energy in the rubble could be so far off as to leave you with a negative total GPE for the Towers?”
No, I never did. I know better. Not only are you misrepresenting my analysis (I begin my analysis with 400 GJ of GPE in the WTC on 9/10/01), but in suggesting that I use the heat in the rubble to work backwards to the GPE of the WTC (for which we have an agreed upon value based on solid research – thank you Robert), you have suggested that I use an analysis technique that is mathematically unsound. Do you understand why you CANNOT TRACE HEAT FLOW BACKWARDS? Mathematically speaking this is an ILL-POSED PROBLEM! You have stumbled into suggesting something that I not only know to a certainty is bad practice, but I can prove it (not prove it in a court of law, but prove it as a mathematical fact).
The heat equation describes thermodynamic heat flow (the transfer of thermal energy between thermally conductive bodies). It is the prototypical parabolic partial differential equation (this means that it is the primary object of study of an entire branch of mathematics). The heat equation is:
d^2u/dt^2 = (alpha) (del)^2 u
(where (del)^2 represents the Laplacian operator). The function u gives an object’s temperature at a point in space and time. The standard type of problem that you use the heat equation to solve (say in the type of differential equations course for engineers which I’ve taught in the past) is the case of determining the temperature profile (how the temperature changes over time) of an iron rod given its starting temperature profile (say it had a hot spot in the middle but otherwise a constant temperature). For (alpha) > 0, using this equation is trying to determine how the temperature of an iron rod changes over time if you start out with hot spots at both ends. If (alpha) < 0 then this equation is trying to determine what the temperature profile of the bar was in the past given that it is at constant temperature now. You can't do this – the bar could have had a hot spot in the middle or a hot spot at either end (or any other profile with the requisite amount of heat) and ended up at the same constant temperature. You cannot solve this problem mathematically – analytically it does not have a unique solution and so any numerical solution is merely one of an infinite number of possibilities. There is a branch of mathematics that considers ill-posed problems but believe me when I say you're nowhere near ready to understand that. If you cannot admit that I am correct here then you are clearly uninterested in having a scientific debate and you will force me to prove that I am correct which will bore everyone to tears (myself included). You don't want to make the Buddha cry, do you?
Here’s the best part!!!!
If we completely remove the plane and the fires from the picture. If we just pretend that nothing hit the building, and that no fires were involved. All we have is that the building collapsed, in the amount of time that it did. Slarti’s calculations still permit the collapse of the building.
Bob Esq.,
The reason I don’t permit ground zero to be treated as an isolated system (for the purposes of applying energy conservation laws) is that it is not and never will be an isolated system. To consider it to be such is to invite fantasy into scientific analysis.
I surprised that you didn’t blast Slarti in your response. He deserves to be blasted. Slarti has dismissed/completely avoided all issues that defeat his analysis.
1. The core of the buildings consisted of vertical steel columns. While it is possible to estimate the energy required to shear the columns (included in my 14 Gigajoules per floor energy requirement), nothing (that deserves repeating) NOTHING has been presented that would introduce a shearing force. These were vertical columns. It would require a horizontal force to shear those columns. IF a horizontal force was present, in the magnitude necessary to shear the vertical columns, instantaneously, the momentum would have caused the building to continue off in that direction. We have no indication of any lateral shift during the collapse.
As you mentioned earlier, it would take many times more vertical force to take down those columns than it would to shear them. (Your pencil example makes that easily recognizable.)
2. Slarti does not account for any deformation of the earth upon impact. He does not account for the earth being “compressible” at the surface, but not in the bedrock, when he calculates the energy necessary to generate a seismic event.
He does not consider the energy necessary to consider different frequencies of sound at different distances, or the effect of multiple sources. (adding a second source (and we know there were millions of sound sources at the collapse) does not provide a linear increase (decibels), but does require much more energy.)
http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-leveladding.htm
I could continue, but why waste my time. Slarti is not subject to peer review. He has declared himself to be a superior being. All he has managed to accomplish is to demonstrate his arrogance, and that he does not have what it takes to perform complex forensic analysis. If you throw a peanut up in the air, and it lands on the coffee table, and the table breaks, Slarti will, just like he has done here, show you that the peanut caused the table to break. Then he will declare you to be inferior because you don’t agree.
BTW. Your pencil analogy brought it home. At that point I recognized that no source for a shearing force was present.
Bob,
Some more fun facts about steel – at 700 C it has 50-70% of its room-temperature strength, at 1000C it’s only 10-30%. That progressive failure theory is starting to look pretty sweet right now, isn’t it? Or do you think that a column that was at 10% strength should have been able to bear a heavier than normal load?
This is a quote from an article titled ‘The Physics of 9/11’ (www.counterpunch.org/thermo11282006.html):
“NIST concentrated its resources on the greatest uncertainty: what initiated the collapse? It was understood that once an upper block of the building was in motion the structure below would be unable to counter the dynamic forces, and collapse would proceed to the ground.”
Doesn’t this sound awfully similar to what I’ve been saying? And how about:
“Pancaking versus NIST is a nonexistent technical argument only to be found in the imagination of some conspiracy-minded people. The technical community migrated from early hypotheses of the initiation, like pancaking, to the NIST conclusions as a consequence of doing the hard work required. And, there was always unanimity on what drove the collapse once it was initiated: excess dynamic force produced from the gravitational potential energy contained within even one level spacing. Once the top began to fall, it was going to crush the building below it, regardless.”
And these comments from Pierre Sprey:
“There is not the slightest need to postulate pre-placed explosive charges to explain why the towers collapsed at near free fall speeds. Let me note a few practical aspects of explosive demolitions that make the explosive charge hypothesis improbable to the point of absurdity:
1. Any demolitions expert concocting a plan to hit a tall building with an airplane and then use pre-placed explosives to UNDETECTABLY ensure the collapse of the building would never place the explosives 20, 30 and 60 floors below the impact point. Obviously, he would put the explosives on one or more floors as close as possible to the planned impact level.
2. It is inconceivable that our demolitions expert would time his surreptitious explosions to occur HOURS after the aircraft impact. He couldn’t possibly be absolutely certain that the impact fires would even last an hour. Quite the opposite: to mask the booster explosions, he’d time them to follow right on the heels of the impact.
3. To ensure collapse of a major building requires very sizable demolition charges, charges that are large enough to do a lot more than emit the “puffs of smoke” cited as evidence for the explosives hypothesis. I’ve seen both live and filmed explosive building demolitions. Each explosion is accompanied by a very visible shower of heavy rubble and a dense cloud of smoke and dust. Just that fact alone makes the explosives hypothesis untenable; no demolitions expert in the world would be willing to promise his client that he could bring down a tall building with explosions guaranteed to be indistinguishable from the effects of an aircraft impact.”
How, exactly, does your controlled demolition theory work?
Also on this site, I found some information about the fires before the collapse. The fire in WTC1 supplied about 2 gigaWatts (GW) of heat for the first 40 minutes. This is more than enough to power the flux capacitor which, as we all know, is what makes time travel possible. This supplied a total of 8 TERAJOULES of heat to the building – 20 times the total GPE of the building or the equivalent of 2 kilotons of TNT (more than 1/10th the energy of the Hiroshima bomb – and that devastated an entire city!). WTC2’s fires burned at around 1 GW for the first 40 minutes supplying a ‘mere’ 3 teraJoules of energy. I’m beginning to think that it was a miracle that the buildings stood for as long as they did. This analysis suggest that the entire impact zone AWAY from the fires would have been between 200 C and 700 C within a half hour after impact. All in all, this article makes it seem like while my arguments are somewhat simplistic, they capture the spirit of what happened. I’ll end with a final passage from this article, which I think sums up thermite nicely:
“Did patches of thermite form naturally, by chance, in the WTC Towers fires? Could there really have been small bits of melted steel in the debris as a result? Could there have been “thermite residues” on pieces of steel dug out of the debris months later? Maybe, but none of this leads to a conspiracy. If the post-mortem “thermite signature” suggested that a mass of thermite comparable to the quantities shown in Table 3 was involved, then further investigation would be reasonable. The first task of such an investigation would be to produce a “chemical kinetics” model of the oxidation of the fragmented aluminum airframe, in some degree of contact to the steel framing, in the hot atmosphere of hydrocarbon fires in the impact zone. Once Nature had been eliminated as a suspect, one could proceed to consider Human Malevolence.”
[Me] “The structure of the building was not designed to match the forces involved in the progressing collapse of the buildings.”
[Bob] “So the interior 47 Column support structure, as seen always standing on its own and higher than the rest of the building during construction, was just for show?”
No, it was overwhelmed by the gravitational collapse of the WTC.
[Me] “Imagine if CD were used to sever the structural supports on a single floor of the building simultaneously. In CD this is typically done to the first floor of a building. If the 80th floor supports were severed by CD, the remaining 30-stories would begin a gravitational collapse.”
Slarti, you stumbled upon one of my own thought experiments I created while trying to comprehend what happened. Problem with this one is, as Buddha would chime in, it’s impossible. The correct order of operations is not to assume CD
You are completely misunderstanding the point of my scenario and probably misunderstanding how CD works. The point was that I didn’t want to argue about how the supports were severed – later, I could (and did) replace that part of the scenario with the supports being severed by progressive failure and defend that on its own merits. In controlled demolition, explosives are used to sever the supports of a building (generally on the bottom floor). While additional explosives are sometimes used to ensure the building comes down in its own footprint, no explosives are used to destroy any additional structure or pulverize any materials, that happens exactly as I described. The supports of the upper 15 stories were cut (by whatever means) and the upper 15 stories began to collapse as any building would, from the bottom up. In addition this was all crashing down on the 94th floor and while the intact structure below it would have resisted much better than the 96th floor, It was ripped away in about 1/10th of a second. From there, as I have said, the forces of the gravitiational collapse (both above and below the impact zone) only become larger. The only possible need for explosives in the gravitational collapse is to cut the supports in the impact zone (which, I believe, is better explained by progressive failure). I keep using the term ‘gravitational collapse’ to remind you that even in controlled demolition, the gravitational collapse is merely triggered by explosives (and a very small amount of explosives relative to the energies involved, I might add…). This small amount of explosives would add negligible heat to the debris. Do you begin to understand why the controlled demolition theory is guilty of multiplying entities beyond necessity?
Bob said:
“The correct order of operations is not to assume CD, why? Because Ockham would not allow it until we’ve ruled out everything else. Here, you’re talking about the instantaneous availability of the GPE stored in 30 stories of a Tower; which as you conceded, could only be conceived of in a CD sense. [No, I merely used that to secure the assumption that the supports were cut so I could go on to talk about gravitational collapse. I later replaced CD with a different mechanism (progressive failure) in order to defend it separately.] Yet we know, in the absence of CD, the law of conservation of mass does not allow for the instantaneous disappearance of a single floor’s worth of perimeter steel as well as a single floor’s height section of the 47 steel column core. [As I’ve said, I find progressive failure the most reasonable mechanism to initiate the collapse.] And ASSUMING that Elfin magic (I like Keebler elves better than Tolkien elves; despite the hype created by Leonard Nimoy’s music video about Bilbo Baggins) [The man created the elven language. You have to give him props for doing something so completely geeky and pointless. And would you please post a link to said video.] did kick in, i.e. removing the law of conservation of mass and allowing for an approximately 12 foot free fall of the 30 story structure; WOULD EVEN THAT BE SUFFICIENT TO SHRED THE 47 COLUMN CORE? [Yes. It probably didn’t really start to shred until it got going, but it was enough to cause the structure of the first few floors to fail and quickly became strong enough to easily shred (it took an average of 1/20th of a second to tear loose each floor – it would have been slower in the beginning and faster as it neared the end).]
Bob said:
“To give you an idea, let’s go one step further into imagination land. Imagine a hammer of the God; a giant sledge hammer in the form used to drive rail road spikes coming out of the sky and landing square on that 47 steel column core. Do rail road spikes shatter into little pieces when driven into the ground? Why is it easier to break a pencil by applying force to its mid-section than by applying force vertically down its length?”
The first floor that was asked to try and stop the collapse (the only one with a chance) faced a massive dynamic load from the impact of a 23 kiloton mass with 1 GJ of kinetic energy. It didn’t have a prayer.
Bob said:
“Beginning to see the problem yet?”
Yes, you don’t understand the physics of the situation.
[Me] “I have accounted for the entire trajectory of the energy that was stored as GPE in the WTC including including the intermediate and final forms of the energy as well as the energy that left the system. Just because you don’t understand the principle of energy conservation doesn’t change the fact that I have completely accounted for all of the energy stored as GPE in the WTC.”
[Bob] “Now you’re getting arrogant. [I’m arrogant a lot (or at least I have been to you), but that’s not what I’m doing here. I’m trying to carefully specify what I did (and taking a shot at you).] If I didn’t understand the principle of energy conservation, why would I be so damned annoyed at your attempt to get work on the cheap by beginning with the thermal energy you guestimated to be in the rubble, subtracting it from the total Pe of the building and arriving at the Work force used to tear that entire building apart as a trivial remainder??”
If you understood the principle you wouldn’t violate it. I began with the energy that Robert and I agreed was stored as GPE in the WTC on 9/11 (400 GJ). I went on to use observations to determine roughly how much of this energy had been used to destroy structure, pulverize material and eject flow and how much was KE immediately before impact and TE in the rubble immediately after. The energy (not force – doing calculations with energy is generally much easier than doing calculations with force, didn’t you learn that in your physics classes?) used to tear the entire building apart is as much as half the total GPE, 200 GJ. Hardly a ‘trivial remainder’.
Bob said:
“You say you accounted for all the the energy in the tower and how it was spent; yes, yes you did make a deductive argument. However, I say your selection & ordering of your premises has lead you to believe the moon is made of green cheese. To wit: All celestial bodies are made of green cheese. The moon is a celestial body. Therefore the moon is made of green cheese.”
All energy is conserved.
The GPE stored in the WTC on 9/11 is energy.
The GPE stored in the WTC on 9/11 is conserved.
Sounds fine to me.
Bob said:
“Deductively speaking, the foregoing is a sound argument. Yet it’s ultimately bullshit because of a counter-factual premise; e.g. like your deducing the amount of work required to tear down the building based on your left-field guestimate of the energy within the rubble [I haven’t made a ‘left-field guesstimate’ here. I have taken an agreed upon value for the GPE and accounted for its conservation.] and the implicit assumption that ALL of the Pe could be immediately converted to Ke for your cosmic inelastic impact [I’ve pretty clearly described the rate at which GPE is converted to KE and it’s consistent with Newton’s law of gravitation.]; which the gravitational constant of Earth simply does not allow.[now you’ve just descended into techno-babble again. ‘Gravitational constant of Earth’?]”
Bob said:
“The burden is upon he who affirms; not he who denies. I’m asking why there was molten metal in the debris for WTC 1, 2 & 7 for nearly six months after the event. And the reason I’m asking is I don’t believe the moon is made of green f’n cheese.”
I’m quite confident that I am the one meeting my burden of proof here. Please consider the possibility that I know what I’m talking about and you really have violated the law of conservation of energy and used the heat equation backwards. That you have continually and egregiously abused the laws of physics while being condescending and mocking of my patient (if arrogant) attempts to correct your ignorance and misunderstanding. How sure are you that you’re on the right side of this? Because I know two Ph.D.s (including myself and a physicist and fellow scientist) who are certain that my interpretation of the physics is the correct one. I may not have a degree in physics, but I studied it for several years and know as much about classical mechanics as just about anyone. Are you positive that you know better than me?
Slarti: “The collapse of WTC7 was an event caused (in my opinion) by the collapse of WTC1 and WTC2 that definitely occurred after serious damage was done to the building in the twin towers’ collapse and fires were allowed to burn unchecked for hours.”
Bob,
Here is an email from the commander on the scene at WTC7 (from debunking911.com):
“Regarding WTC 7: The long-awaited US Government NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) report on the collapse of WTC 7 is due to be published at the end of this year (although it has been delayed already a few times). That report should explain the cause and mechanics of the collapse in great detail. Early on the afternoon of September 11th 2001, following the collapse of WTC 1 & 2, I feared a collapse of WTC 7 (as did many on my staff).
The reasons are as follows:
1 – Although prior to that day high-rise structures had never collapsed, The collapse of WTC 1 & 2 showed that certain high-rise structures subjected to damage from impact and from fire will collapse.
2. The collapse of WTC 1 damaged portions of the lower floors of WTC 7.
3. WTC 7, we knew, was built on a small number of large columns providing an open Atrium on the lower levels.
4. numerous fires on many floors of WTC 7 burned without sufficient water supply to attack them.
For these reasons I made the decision (without consulting the owner, the mayor or anyone else – as ranking fire officer, that decision was my responsibility) to clear a collapse zone surrounding the building and to stop all activity within that zone. Approximately three hours after that order was given, WTC 7 collapsed.
Conspiracy theories abound and I believe firmly that all of them are without merit.
Regards, Dan Nigro
Chief of Department FDNY (retired)”
Is the retired fire chief in on the conspiracy, or can we take this at face value?
Bob said:
“Are you aware of the witnesses trapped inside WTC 7 who believed they were about to die because of the explosions heard within WTC 7?”
You don’t think that there were things in a major skyscraper (electrical substations, elevator machinery, etc.) that could possibly explode after damage in the collapse of WTC1 and unfought fires?
Bob said:
“And it was all that ‘burning fuel oil’ that not only managed to completely bring down a steel building for the first time in history [If you’re not totally stupid, you know that I’m alleging that a combination of ‘natural’ factors led to a progressive failure like I described in my previous post.], but its collapse was explained by the BBC 20 minutes before it ever happened.”
You don’t think that in an extremely stressful situation, when discussing a building that everyone had been expecting to collapse for 3 hours, a BBC reporter could have misspoke? Rather, you think that a BBC reporter was in on the conspiracy and accidentally revealed secret information? Yes Bob, that’s a fine tinfoil hat you’re wearing.
[Me] “It left a nearby pile of debris. And I would note the there is a big difference between a ‘molten pile of debris’ and a ‘pile of debris containing some molten metal’.”
[Bob] “That’s about as cute as correcting my spelling. You know damn well what I meant; to wit: The debris of Building 7 registered more than 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit five days after the collapse.”
And at what temperature would you expect the rubble pile to be and how fast would you expect it to cool? You have absolutely no evidence that this is an anomaly. The entire point that I’ve been trying to make is that it was to be expected that there would be a lot of heat in the rubble.
[Me] “And yes, the phenomena observed in the WTC7 debris must be explained using the same principles applied to the circumstances of the WTC7 collapse.”
[Bob]: “That’s my point; you can’t do it. [I can certainly construct a model of the WTC7 collapse in an attempt to determine if a ‘natural’ collapse scenario could account for observations. Due to several factors this would be a more difficult undertaking with fewer observations than the collapse of WTC1 and WTC2. I would probably get an inconclusive result. But I could do it.] Since you relied so heavily on qualitative descriptions of a massive amount of GPE available in the Towers, your theory simply does not and can not account for the collapse of WTC 7. [You have no evidence which contradicts my theory nor do you have any evidence (or numbers of any kind) to support your theory that explosives/incendiaries added heat to the rubble.] And yet when you hear Ockham’s call to check your bullpen for another entity to explain the discrepancy, you ignore it like a petulant child. [We clearly disagree on who is behaving like a petulant child.]”
[Me] “…what would it take to convince you that explosives/incendiaries were not involved in the WTC collapse?”
[Bob] “I didn’t answer because I objected to the form of the question. Slarti, in case I haven’t told you before, I’m a Meyers-Briggs INTP/INTJ. What does that mean? It means, for purposes here, that I’m normally an affable guy until someone violates a PRINCIPLE or calls a principle into question without foundation.”
Well, I suppose that you should know that I am also a normally affable guy until someone violates a principle (the specific one you violated was conservation of energy). Apparently, I crossed you when I suggested Ockham’s Razor favored the ‘natural’ hypothesis, violating your ‘philosophy of science’ view of how OR should be used. I was, however, using OR in the standard way that it is used in science: to decide between preliminary hypotheses. I have provided multiple quotes suggesting that this is the standard usage of OR in the scientific community. I have clearly laid out my hypothesis and the evidence I have in support of it (in GREAT detail). I have computed or estimated as many of the values as I reasonably could and have presented a fairly complete description of how I believe the entire collapse
happened as well as a complete accounting of all of the GPE in the WTC on 9/11. In short, you’ve wandered out of philosophy of science and into the weeds of plain old science. I know that you wandered past the door and heard something that you thought was wrong, but you were mistaken. Then, in trying to explain the error that you perceived, you said something very wrong about science. After that, as a friend of mine likes to say, it was ‘go time’. If you’ve been reading my posts, it should be clear by now that I am an actual scientist and that I am really ‘doing the math’, so to speak. I’ve spent a lot of time laying our a nuanced analysis of what I hypothesize happened in the collapse and I’ve provided evidence for my hypothesis in the form of a falsifiable quantitative model. In other words, I understand that you came here full of what you thought was justified anger, but you were mistaken. Unfortunately, you have inspired a justified anger in me and while you are formidable in your arena, you’ve stumbled into Cameron Indoor now and Duke is about to go to town on you. If you will just admit that I was using Ockham’s Razor in a way completely consistent with standard (scientific) usage and have a reasonable theory of the collapse that is consistent with the laws of physics and which I have evidence to support, you will spare yourself whatever unpleasantness awaits.
Bob said:
“So, the short answer would be to hear an explanation that properly accounted for all the principles at play in this scenario.”
I have presented a detailed explanation of the collapse of the WTC which conforms to the principles of physics at play in this scenario. You may argue that other scenarios are more likely, but I have evidence for my argument and you have none. In science debates are not won with rhetoric, but with evidence.
Bob said:
“The second problem I have with your form of question, and you should mark this down in your notebook for future reference, is that it screams of ‘outcome determinism.’ What you’re doing in that question is asking me for a desired outcome on my part so that you can, like an intellectually dishonest judge, can cobble together a few premises, sans syllogism, to create the illusion that you’ve arrived at said outcome by honest reasoning. (See Dred Scott)”
I’ve asked the question: Were ‘natural’ causes sufficient to account for observations of WTC1 and WTC2 on and after 9/11? I’ve made the hypothesis: Natural causes were sufficient to account for observations of heat in the WTC collapse. I have constructed a falsifyable quantitative model in support of my hypothesis and I’ve suggested that, in the standard scientific usage, Ockham’s razor favors my hypothesis over it’s negation: Additional sources of heat (explosives, incendiaries, etc.) were necessary to account for observations on and after 9/11. I don’t know how a judge (good or bad) behaves, but this is how a good scientist behaves. By the way, if at some point in all of this you start to get the feeling that you’re in way over your head, just let me know and I’ll back off.
Bob said:
“Did you ever, I mean EVER, consider that your beginning your analysis with the thermal energy in the rubble could be so far off as to leave you with a negative total GPE for the Towers? Q=mc(delta-T) Six months Slarti. Six months at or near the heat of fusion for molten metal.”
I made a similar mistake once and it contributed to my failing my qualifying exam on my first try. I was asked to prove that the backwards heat equation was unstable and basically choked (if you’ve never been dragged through a proof in an oral exam before, it’s pretty brutal). You can’t start at molten metal and go backwards to find out where the heat came from – that’s violating the laws and principles of both mathematics and physics (and I can PROVE it! now ;-)). Causality follows the entropy arrow and to suggest otherwise is totally unscientific.
Slarti: “I have accounted for the entire trajectory of the energy that was stored as GPE in the WTC including including the intermediate and final forms of the energy as well as the energy that left the system. Just because you don’t understand the principle of energy conservation doesn’t change the fact that I have completely accounted for all of the energy stored as GPE in the WTC.”
Now you’re getting arrogant. If I didn’t understand the principle of energy conservation, why would I be so damned annoyed at your attempt to get work on the cheap by beginning with the thermal energy you guestimated to be in the rubble, subtracting it from the total Pe of the building and arriving at the Work force used to tear that entire building apart as a trivial remainder??
You say you accounted for all the the energy in the tower and how it was spent; yes, yes you did make a deductive argument. However, I say your selection & ordering of your premises has lead you to believe the moon is made of green cheese.
To wit:
All celestial bodies are made of green cheese.
The moon is a celestial body.
Therefore the moon is made of green cheese.
Deductively speaking, the foregoing is a sound argument. Yet it’s ultimately bullshit because of a counter-factual premise; e.g. like your deducing the amount of work required to tear down the building based on your left-field guestimate of the energy within the rubble and the implicit assumption that ALL of the Pe could be immediately converted to Ke for your cosmic inelastic impact; which the gravitational constant of Earth simply does not allow.
The burden is upon he who affirms; not he who denies. I’m asking why there was molten metal in the debris for WTC 1, 2 & 7 for nearly six months after the event. And the reason I’m asking is I don’t believe the moon is made of green f’n cheese.
One last note for tonight (it’s getting late)
Did you ever, I mean EVER, consider that your beginning your analysis with the thermal energy in the rubble could be so far off as to leave you with a negative total GPE for the Towers?
Q=mc(delta-T)
Six months Slarti. Six months at or near the heat of fusion for molten metal.