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
Bob posted:
Slarti: “Yes, I should have said, “In all of my calculations regarding the plane I used the speed of 404 knots that I got from Wikipedia which cited a bad link from the NIST report as its source. While this value is 19 knots higher than the value given in an executive summary of NCSTAR1-2 which I linked to, it is still 4 knots lower than the upper bound on the margin for error.”
You said you have always been citing the NIST report; and you weren’t. Attorneys who attempt to claim they’re citing a case they haven’t even glanced at get reamed, nay even sanctioned, for such horseshit. Yet in lieu of apologizing you fabricate additional rules out of thin air and attempt to excuse yourself by showing how your misrepresentation is excused by virtue of it fitting within your new rules. It’s shameless.
No, I didn’t check the link, I just took it at face value (and I love the fact that I must check everything I post back to the original source while you are allowed to make unsupported assertions which I should just take on faith). I’m not an attorney citing a case – I don’t worry too much about this sort of error since I disclose the sources of all of the values that I use, I am perfectly willing to make corrections if necessary and you, Robert and Duh act as a primitive sort of peer-review.
I’ve been making a scientific argument about a scientific question for four months now (Just in case you’ve forgotten, the question is: ‘Does Ockham’s razor favor the ‘natural’ hypothesis of the WTC collapse over the theory that accelerants were required to cause the observed effects.) While I may have used the odd legal term here and there, I’ve never said that I was trying to make a legal case – only a scientific one (it is a legal blog, after all, and using legal terms is a good way to see if I understand them, since you will be sure to point out when I use a term incorrectly – although I still believe that I used the term fungible in an appropriate way…). In modeling an event, it is most important to get the correct methodology (you can always change the numbers if you find better values later and if the methodology is sound then redoing the analysis to account for more accurate parameters is easy). While you and Robert were complaining that I couldn’t use the law of conservation of energy (which I was later able to provide a reference that completely validated my methodology as being correct as well as standard practice and which no one was able to refute) and that kinetic energy wasn’t converted to heat in collisions (for which I also provided references which were never impeached), I built a sound methodology (which I’ve been improving ever since). Why should I be locked in to the first value that I found if it later turns out that there is a more accurate one. In science, continuing to use data which one knows to be incorrect or inaccurate is not just shameless, it is unethical.
Slarti: “I have redone the calculations using the updated numbers and presented them.” That doesn’t change the fact that your implication that I had ever said, implied or quoted any source alleging that 767s were capable of flying at over 500 knots was a falsehood that you used to create a straw man in order to discredit me.”
I stand corrected; you actually said the plane was traveling 500 mph. I’m truly sorry. However, that’s 434 knots; i.e. 74 knots above the maximum operating speed for a Boeing 767 and 9 knots over the limit at which said 767’s would tend to shear their own wings off at or near sea level. So, as you see, 500 knots or mph is still well within the ‘margin of impossible figures.’ It gets real fun when you consider that AAL 175 is said to have struck South Tower at 510 knots; i.e. 150 knots over the maximum operating speed and 85 knots over the ‘we’re dead already’ speed.
I never said ‘over 500 mph’ a source I quoted referred to 9/11 being the first time that buildings had been struck by planes traveling over 500 mph (and, for the record, the NIST report – link in my previous post – gives the impact speed of UA 175 as 542 +/- 24 mph and the speed of 443 +/- 30 mph). And as for the ‘maximum operating speed’ it would be 493 knots (568 mph) at 35,000 ft (per Wikipedia). I searched for the maximum operating speed at or near sea level of a 767 and the only results that I found were either from the ‘no planes’ wing of the truther movement, said the speed limit was for safety reasons, or said the engines couldn’t get the planes up to speed at around 1000 ft. (I don’t think that the planes were at 1000 ft. when they were hijacked…)
One of the sources I found was a thread titled: “Can a 767 Fly 500MPH @ 700ft Altitude? Boeing Official Says: Ha Ha Ha! Not a Chance!” Here is the original post:
Unfortunately the YouTube video that was provided as evidence has been removed (I post a link to a mp3 of a conversation with Mr. Keith below), but here are the first two comments:
and
This sounds pretty reasonable to me. The entire thread can be found at:
www(dot)abovetopsecret(dot)com/forum/thread304786/pg1
Here’s a post saying the max speed under 8,000 ft is 360 mph (as a safety precaution against bird strikes – we don’t have Sully flying every plane after all…)
I’m not sure that the terrorists were worried about bird strikes. This thread can be found at:
www(dot)democraticunderground(dot)com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125×78706
Here is a link to a mp3 of an interview with Joseph Keith, a retired aerospace engineer who designed the ‘shaker system’ for Boeing (that’s what it said on the comment where I found the link, anyway). Listen to it and make up your own mind about his credibility (it’s about 20 min long – WARNING: this is 20 minutes of your life that you will never get back, although it does contain the laughable assertion that the planes should have impacted on the exterior rather than penetrating the structure of the building.):
www(dot)pumpitout(dot)com/audio/joseph_keith_081607_planes.mp3
Here is a website that uses the fact that the planes were supposedly traveling ‘too fast’ to argue that all of the videos of the impacts were faked:
www(dot)911research(dot)dsl.pipex.com/ggua175/speed/
I also found whoppers like the claim that the WTC was destroyed by underground nuclear explosions! I can’t help but wonder why Bob (who is so concerned about the sources of my information) didn’t post any links to sources for his assertions…
Slarti: “I never implied that the speed of impact of the WTC steel was faster than the free-fall speed of 90 m/s (in fact I said it was slower) and since I ‘did the math’ I’ve consistently said that the impact would have heated the mass of the building by about 20-30 °C. Apparently you have reading comprehension issues.”
Really?
Slarti: “Let us consider an impactor striking the earth. … To provide a focus, I’ll discuss the impactor which created Chicxulub crater in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.” (December 16, 2009 at 7:21 pm)
The implicit assumption being that the foregoing is the closest macroscopic example of a perfectly inelastic collision.
My only implication is that the physical principles in play in both collisions are exactly the same (which they are).
In accord with your repeated claim that
Slarti: “I am justified treating the WTC collapse as an inelastic collision.” (January 8, 2010 at 7:44 pm)
That’s an interesting excerpt from my post – the complete sentence was:
I have explained in detail why I am justified treating the WTC collapse as an inelastic collision.
And I have explained why my assumption was justified in great detail.
(Innuendo, innuendo….)
As we can see, Bob’s intellectual honesty is a model to us all…
Slarti: “Based on this analysis, I conclude that there was sufficient heat generated by the collapse of the WTC to account for the observations at ground zero.” (December 16, 2009 at 7:21 pm)
Your observation at ground zero being:
Slarti: “This analysis implying that enough heat was created to liquify 500 metric tons of iron suggests to me that molten iron would be expected at ground zero.” (December 17, 2009 at 12:27 am)
While this statement is true (the GPE in the WTC was enough energy to liquify 533 Metric tons of iron – and even more steel due to eutectics), I may have implied in the post that the melting came from impact (I didn’t go back and look, but given the date it is certainly possible). I later corrected this implication when I realized that the mass of the building would only be raised by 20-30 °C. This is an indication that I’ve been continually improving my understanding of the physics of the collapse – what have you learned in the last 4 months, Bob?
Later I asked you to tell me how many joules are required to melt one kg of steel and you said 900,000 joules. Then, working within your IFT paradigm, I asked “At what velocity must one kg of steel need to fall in order for it to ‘liquify?’”
Answer: 1341.6 m/s or 3000 mph or Mach 3.94
Which is roughly correct (for iron, anyway – the number for steel would be a little slower).
Meaning, working within your ‘impactor’ paradigm and belaboring the obvious, in order generate enough heat to melt that Kg of steel via collapse of the WTC, that Kg of steel must ‘impact’ the earth at no less than 1341.6 m/sec.
That’s to melt the entire impacting object. If an 5 m long iron beam (the 900,000 Joule figure is for iron, not steel) impacted the ground at 60 m/s it would have enough kinetic energy (most of which would be converted to heat) to melt 1 cm of the beam. How much deformation of the beam do you think there would be in that scenario? Because if it were on the order of 1 cm, some melting would be possible.
Slarti: “You had to wade through months of my debunking because you wouldn’t admit that things heat up via impact with the Earth and that at sufficiently high velocities impactors can melt or vaporize (or even liquify enough of the Earth’s crust to form a crater 25,000 square kilometers in area).”
Gee, you mean sufficiently high velocities like 1341.6 m/s or 3000 mph or Mach 3.94?? What was it that I wouldn’t admit; that you can’t change the gravitational acceleration constant for planet Earth? Seriously; are you capable of engaging in debate without re-writing the history of the argument?
I meant velocities on the order of escape velocity and I would wager that everyone but you (and Robert and Duh) knew it. And as we learned on Star Trek, sometimes the easy solution is to change the gravitational constant of the universe (if you’re from the Q continuum…).
Slarti: “There is no evidence that iron was raised to its heat of fusion,”
Yet this was the one point we agreed on at the inception of this argument; forming the part of the basis thereof.
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a091201moltenmetal#a091201moltenmetal
Waffles anyone?
I can’t re-evalute the evidence in the light of new information? The fact that there is evidence of eutectic mixtures that would have liquified at between 700-800 °C and that simply sprinkling sulfur on iron lowers its melting point to under 1000 °C should just be ignored because we didn’t know that at the beginning of this argument? Please. That would be extremely poor scientific procedure. For months I’ve been careful about using the phrase ‘molten metal’ rather than ‘iron at or near its heat of fusion’ the fact that molten steel would have been observed in the rubble at temperatures as low as 700 °C seem significant to me.
Slarti: “merely that steel and other compound exceeded their eutectic points (which could have been as low as 700 °C and definitely were below 1000 °C).”
At the very least, the NASA thermographs confirm temperatures in excess of 1300 deg F. (700 C)
Meaning molten steel was to be expected. Especially considering that the temperature must have been hotter inside the pile.
Slarti: “What happens when steam comes in contact with a liquid eutectic mixture containing iron? Can you say that a known (exothermic) oxidation reaction (which produces hydrogen) does not occur?”
Question begging at the very least; how do you use Lane’s process as both the cause and result of the heat you’re attempting to account for? Lane’s process created the molten metal AND Lane’s process was a byproduct of the molten metal?
It could have been the initial source of the heat or just a continuing source – experiments would have to be done in order to determine at what temperature spraying water (or steam – the water could have been turned to steam before encountering hot steel) on hot steel results in an exothermic reaction (and the generation of hydrogen). I suspect that the iron being part of a liquid eutectic mixture would enhance rather than inhibit the reaction.
Slarti: “What about the corrosion of aluminum in water? There is evidence that this occurred and it is also an exothermic reaction which produces hydrogen. How much heat was produced by this source?”
You mean aluminum oxide; right?
According to the US Army Corps of Engineers,
Feel free to elaborate how this ‘corrosion of aluminum in water’ took place despite the aluminum oxide film; i.e. stable within aqueous media with a pH between 4.0 and 8.5. [Measurements of water samples from the basements of the WTC reveal pH levels in excess of 10…] Or what mechanism was at work capable of continuously abrading the film thus exposing the pure aluminum for further chemical reactions? I’m keen to guess.
Once more we see that you don’t read my sources… The following quotes are from:
911(dot)myths(dot)com/WTCTHERM.pdf
Hmmm…
And if you want evidence that an aluminum-water corrosion reaction occured:
There is a lot more good stuff in this paper about aluminum and the type of thermitic reactions that likely happened – and before you start whining about Dr. Greening and Newton’s third law, you might want to find some evidence to support you before you try and say that Dr. Greening doesn’t understand chemistry, the field he has a PhD in…
Slarti: “Why are thermitic reactions from deliberately placed (but apparently un-detonated/un-ignited) charges the only (or even the best) source of heat in the rubble?”
Actually, the question is what possible mode of reasoning allows you to ignore actual physical evidence of active nano-thermitic material found within the dust of the WTC? It’s an illusion created by a defect in the electron microscope at BYU? Tell me.
I’ve been pretty clear about the quality of the science in Dr. Jones’ work. His samples don’t have a well-established chain of custody, he didn’t control for other sources (metalworking in the apartment in which they were collected and the cutting of beams during the ground zero cleanup effort), his results haven’t been verified by an independent lab, he hasn’t supported his assertion that thermate is the only possible source of the material, his articles have all been published under ethically dubious circimstances… I’ve documented all of this and provided sources for these conclusions. And, of course, you never answered the question I asked.
Slarti: “Both [the WTC and the universe] are legitimate, well-defined choices of system which I used to make my point”
Then how was I wrong and you right when I ‘chose’ to use the WTC as ‘the sytem’; i.e. when you were DEMANDING that the system is ‘the universe?’ Hmm?
No, I said that the universe was a valid choice of system (which it is) – at the time you (and/or Robert) were demanding that conservation of energy only held for isolated systems – I’ve since established that conservation of energy holds for EVERY choice of system.
Slarti: “Anything glows hot orange at the appropriate temperature.”
What temperature? How much over 1220.58 °F? Still think it was molten aluminum pouring out of the South Tower? Do you know why aluminum is a dull gray color when melted? (what’s that film called…?)
So if it was molten steel that poured out of the South Tower, where did the 30 tons of steel come from? (this comes from an estimate of the volume of molten material observed) Why were there no visible signs of the loss of structural integrity that the melting of 30 tons of structural steel would cause? Why was the steel melted and pouring out of the building BEFORE the building started to collapse? Considering the fact that aircraft hulls are known to melt due to crashes and fires where the fuel tanks AREN’T breached, is it not more likely that this was aluminum from the airframes, possibly mixed with other components present in the impact zone? And check out the following quote from Dr. Greening’s paper cited above:
Seems to me that Ockham says aluminum not steel on this one…
Slarti: “Quite a while ago I asked you about your view of my use of Ockham’s razor”
“Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora”
The Latin to English translator I found gave me “In vain fit very more numerous and power be made very few” by which I assume that this is a restatement of Ockham’s razor – but you still didn’t answer my question. I guess that means you know I used Ockham’s razor appropriately and came to a correct conclusion but just don’t want to admit it.
Example: Was it really necessary to postulate the existence of Lane’s process as a viable source of heat accounting for the molten metal at ground zero? Or were you really just wasting our time?
If you are going to assert that thermitic materials are the only source of heat capable of melting metal (without any support) then we must investigate all of the other possible sources of heat in the rubble. So, yes, it was necessary.
You’re probably familiar with the saying: “If you have the law on your side, you argue the law. If you have the facts on your side, you argue the facts. If you have neither, bang on the table with your fist, loudly and with as much conviction as possible.” You’ve been banging on the table loudly for four months now, but I’ve got the (physical) law on my side and I’ve got the facts on my side and all of your sound and fury signifies nought.
Slarti: “Yes, I should have said, “In all of my calculations regarding the plane I used the speed of 404 knots that I got from Wikipedia which cited a bad link from the NIST report as its source. While this value is 19 knots higher than the value given in an executive summary of NCSTAR1-2 which I linked to, it is still 4 knots lower than the upper bound on the margin for error.”
You said you have always been citing the NIST report; and you weren’t. Attorneys who attempt to claim they’re citing a case they haven’t even glanced at get reamed, nay even sanctioned, for such horseshit. Yet in lieu of apologizing you fabricate additional rules out of thin air and attempt to excuse yourself by showing how your misrepresentation is excused by virtue of it fitting within your new rules. It’s shameless.
Slarti: “I have redone the calculations using the updated numbers and presented them.” That doesn’t change the fact that your implication that I had ever said, implied or quoted any source alleging that 767s were capable of flying at over 500 knots was a falsehood that you used to create a straw man in order to discredit me.”
I stand corrected; you actually said the plane was traveling 500 mph. I’m truly sorry. However, that’s 434 knots; i.e. 74 knots above the maximum operating speed for a Boeing 767 and 9 knots over the limit at which said 767’s would tend to shear their own wings off at or near sea level. So, as you see, 500 knots or mph is still well within the ‘margin of impossible figures.’ It gets real fun when you consider that AAL 175 is said to have struck South Tower at 510 knots; i.e. 150 knots over the maximum operating speed and 85 knots over the ‘we’re dead already’ speed.
Slarti: “I never implied that the speed of impact of the WTC steel was faster than the free-fall speed of 90 m/s (in fact I said it was slower) and since I ‘did the math’ I’ve consistently said that the impact would have heated the mass of the building by about 20-30 °C. Apparently you have reading comprehension issues.”
Really?
Slarti: “Let us consider an impactor striking the earth. … To provide a focus, I’ll discuss the impactor which created Chicxulub crater in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.” (December 16, 2009 at 7:21 pm)
The implicit assumption being that the foregoing is the closest macroscopic example of a perfectly inelastic collision.
In accord with your repeated claim that
Slarti: “I am justified treating the WTC collapse as an inelastic collision.” (January 8, 2010 at 7:44 pm)
(Innuendo, innuendo….)
Slarti: “Based on this analysis, I conclude that there was sufficient heat generated by the collapse of the WTC to account for the observations at ground zero.” (December 16, 2009 at 7:21 pm)
Your observation at ground zero being:
Slarti: “This analysis implying that enough heat was created to liquify 500 metric tons of iron suggests to me that molten iron would be expected at ground zero.” (December 17, 2009 at 12:27 am)
Later I asked you to tell me how many joules are required to melt one kg of steel and you said 900,000 joules. Then, working within your IFT paradigm, I asked “At what velocity must one kg of steel need to fall in order for it to ‘liquify?’”
Answer: 1341.6 m/s or 3000 mph or Mach 3.94
Meaning, working within your ‘impactor’ paradigm and belaboring the obvious, in order generate enough heat to melt that Kg of steel via collapse of the WTC, that Kg of steel must ‘impact’ the earth at no less than 1341.6 m/sec.
Slarti: “You had to wade through months of my debunking because you wouldn’t admit that things heat up via impact with the Earth and that at sufficiently high velocities impactors can melt or vaporize (or even liquify enough of the Earth’s crust to form a crater 25,000 square kilometers in area).”
Gee, you mean sufficiently high velocities like 1341.6 m/s or 3000 mph or Mach 3.94?? What was it that I wouldn’t admit; that you can’t change the gravitational acceleration constant for planet Earth? Seriously; are you capable of engaging in debate without re-writing the history of the argument?
Slarti: “There is no evidence that iron was raised to its heat of fusion,”
Yet this was the one point we agreed on at the inception of this argument; forming the part of the basis thereof.
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a091201moltenmetal#a091201moltenmetal
Waffles anyone?
Slarti: “merely that steel and other compound exceeded their eutectic points (which could have been as low as 700 °C and definitely were below 1000 °C).”
At the very least, the NASA thermographs confirm temperatures in excess of 1300 deg F. (700 C)
Slarti: “What happens when steam comes in contact with a liquid eutectic mixture containing iron? Can you say that a known (exothermic) oxidation reaction (which produces hydrogen) does not occur?”
Question begging at the very least; how do you use Lane’s process as both the cause and result of the heat you’re attempting to account for? Lane’s process created the molten metal AND Lane’s process was a byproduct of the molten metal?
Slarti: “What about the corrosion of aluminum in water? There is evidence that this occurred and it is also an exothermic reaction which produces hydrogen. How much heat was produced by this source?”
You mean aluminum oxide; right?
According to the US Army Corps of Engineers, “Aluminum has excellent corrosion resistance in a wide range of water and soil conditions because of the tough oxide film that forms on its surface. Although aluminum is an active metal in the galvanic series, this film affords excellent protection except in
several special cases.” The Aluminum Association states, “Unless exposed to some substance or condition which destroys this protective oxide coating, the metal remains resistant to corrosion. Aluminum is highly resistant to weathering, even in many industrial atmospheres, which often corrode other metals. It is also resistant to many acids.”
Feel free to elaborate how this ‘corrosion of aluminum in water’ took place despite the aluminum oxide film; i.e. stable within aqueous media with a pH between 4.0 and 8.5. Or what mechanism was at work capable of continuously abrading the film thus exposing the pure aluminum for further chemical reactions? I’m keen to guess.
Slarti: “Why are thermitic reactions from deliberately placed (but apparently un-detonated/un-ignited) charges the only (or even the best) source of heat in the rubble?”
Actually, the question is what possible mode of reasoning allows you to ignore actual physical evidence of active nano-thermitic material found within the dust of the WTC? It’s an illusion created by a defect in the electron microscope at BYU? Tell me.
Slarti: “Both are legitimate, well-defined choices of system which I used to make my point”
Then how was I wrong and you right when I ‘chose’ to use the WTC as ‘the sytem’; i.e. when you were DEMANDING that the system is ‘the universe?’ Hmm?
Slarti: “Anything glows hot orange at the appropriate temperature.”
What temperature? How much over 1220.58 °F? Still think it was molten aluminum pouring out of the South Tower? Do you know why aluminum is a dull gray color when melted? (what’s that film called…?)
Slarti: “Quite a while ago I asked you about your view of my use of Ockham’s razor”
“Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora”
Example: Was it really necessary to postulate the existence of Lane’s process as a viable source of heat accounting for the molten metal at ground zero? Or were you really just wasting our time?
If anyone still out there is looking for some reading material this is an article entitled ‘Good Science and 9-11 Demolition Theories’ which points out just how little the proponents of controlled demolition understand about how controlled demolition works. Although it is fairly long, it’s very accessible and easy to read.
http://www.jnani.org/mrking/writings/911/king911.htm
Bob posted:
Quite a while ago I asked you about your view of my use of Ockham’s razor to decide between the hypotheses: “‘natural’ processes are sufficient to explain observations of the WTC collapse” and “artificial accelerants are needed to explain observations of the WTC collapse”. Namely, do you believe that:
(a) I have used OR appropriately and come to the correct conclusion.
(b) I have used OR appropriately and come to an incorrect conclusion.
(c) I have used OR inappropriately.
or (d) There is another possibility that I haven’t thought of (if so, please explain).
I would appreciate it if you would answer this question. If you avoid it I will assume:
(e) You know that the answer is (a) and are avoiding answering the question as it means that your entire argument here is wrong.
Slarti: “I admit that I didn’t check the link when I posted that”
Thus the reason the statement
“In all of my calculations regarding the plane, I used the speed of 404 knots from the NIST report.”
is false.
Another falsehood you bandy about is the claim that Dr. Jones was let go from BYU for something more than political reasons and that the university does not support his research. It would be a clever attempt by you at poisoning the well but for the fact that the faculty at BYU has been supporting him ever since his paid leave.
Which leads us to another falsehood of yours, i.e. that Dr. Jones work is not peer reviewed. In fact, the very paper which you despise, “Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe” was in fact peer reviewed and approved by BYU.
Yet your strategy remains to toss out the falsehoods and build on the innuendos.
How much time did you have us waste with such horseshit as:
Fire Impact theory; containing the counterfactual implication that steel was accelerated far beyond that of gravitational acceleration, up to a speed of Mach 4 before ‘impacting’ with the ground below so as to melt. How many months of bullshit innuendos did we have to wade through with that one?
Lane’s process; where the steel was raised to the heat of fusion by pouring cold water over it ( thence backtracking: “Oh, I didn’t mean it was a primary source of the heat or even raised the temperature of the rubble a single degree…)
Claiming for months that ‘the system is the universe;’ except when such vague definition fails to serve your purpose, e.g. when you changed your definition of the system as the WTC.
Claiming that molten aluminum glows hot orange instead of dull gray.
Turning Newton’s thee laws of motion into Newton’s Three Laws of Stasis simply because you claim, ipse dixet, that Newton’s third law doesn’t apply well to “dynamic” systems?
Using approximated totals for your energy analysis while claiming Newton’s third law is inapplicable because we cannot simply approximate forces; i.e the way you approximated the energy totals.
Slarti: “I would ask you to leave your Hollywood world where gravitational collapse requires assistance and thermite is the only significant source of heat and join the rest of us in the reality-based world of examining things with the dispassionate eye of science. And please bring Robert and Duh with you, too.”
Yeah, you’re rife with integrity.
Bob posted:
Dear [Slarti],
First, let me apologize for using the phrase ‘fucking liar.’ Perhaps if my father had not passed away a few days earlier I might have used more politically correct language. However, thoughts of one’s own mortality tends to lower one’s threshold tolerance for bullshit.
Apology accepted and my sincere condolences on the death of your father, but I’ll let others be the judge of the credibility of my statements on this thread.
I’m sure you take your work very seriously else you wouldn’t be in the position you are at present. However the same cannot be said of your analysis in this debate. I doubt very much that you would ever cite wikipedia as a reference for ANY work you do professionally, much less cite such secondary sources without even glancing at the alleged primary sources as such practice is per se unprofessional.
While you are certainly correct that I wouldn’t CITE wikipedia in a professional paper, that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t USE Wikipedia in the course of professional research. As I mentioned in a previous post, I was recently meeting with my thesis advisor (chair of the Duke math department) and we were trying to find information about determining the characteristic equation for a system of coupled hyperbolic time-delay partial differential equations and his first thought was to look up hyperbolic PDEs on Wikipedia (I found this highly amusing in light of our debate here). I’ve used Wikipedia mainly in two different ways in the course of this debate: I’ve used it as a convenient reference for terms and concepts that I already knew and I’ve used it as a place to start when trying to learn something new (pun intended ;-)). In the former sense, I’ve used Wikipedia for things like the definition of an open/closed/isolated system – since I already knew the definitions and was looking for a reference that I could quote, I didn’t feel the need to verify Wikipedia’s definition beyond the fact that it agreed with what I already knew to be true. When these type of quotes (or my interpretation of them) have been challenged (primarily by Robert and Duh), I have responded by providing additional supporting references. I would also add that none of the challenges that have been raised included references which refuted the quotes from Wikipedia or my interpretations of them – I do believe that my opinion supported by Wikipedia is far more persuasive that someone else’s unsupported opinion. An example of the latter use of Wikipedia would be my post on eutectics – I started off by quoting the Wikipedia definition and followed up with several other references to support my understanding of eutectics and their significance in our debate (as far as I’m concerned, you now have no evidence of temperatures over 1000 °C and it is entirely possible that there could have been molten steel at temperatures in the neighborhood of 700 °C). A final way in which I have used Wikipedia is as a reference is on concepts where I understood the theory but didn’t know specific numbers such as the determining the energy of a given sound power level or local magnitude (Richter scale reading) or the characteristics of the Chixulub impactor. Any of the numbers that I have used from Wikipedia are open to debate and I will gladly either defend them or accept numbers that someone else proposes.
To wit: You said: “In all of my calculations regarding the plane, I used the speed of 404 knots from the NIST report. Once more Bob lies to create a straw man – it must be a day ending in ‘Y’.” My first attempt at bringing this falsehood of yours into specific relief was through a quote from the film Tomstone — “Credat Judaeus apella, non ego.” or ‘Let Appella the Jew believe, not I.’
Let’s take a look at the complete context of my accusation:
As you can see, I accused you of lying when you said that I had claimed a 767 could travel 500 knots. (Note: I later erroneously claimed that this value was from Dr. Greening’s paper in which he cited the NIST report – he actually used a larger value. My value was (as Bob suggests below) from the Wikipedia article on AA11 which cited the NIST report as its source.)
You say I’m lying [And when my quote is taken in context we see that you were lying.], yet you claim to have always used a 404 knots calculation from a NIST report that is no longer available on their website. Yet the 404 knots calculation DOES appear on wikipedia. What can I say?
I admit that I didn’t check the link when I posted that, but since any values I use are just parameters (and as I indicated above, I’m always willing to justify or correct any of my parameters) this objection has absolutely no bearing on my methodology. In light of this, what does the NIST report actually say? Well, on page 36 of the executive summary of NCSTAR1-2, which may be found at:
http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/NCSTAR1-2ExecutiveSummary.pdf
the velocity of AA11 is given as 443 +/- 30 mph (542 +/- 24 mph for UA175) which translates to 383 +/- 26 knots. As you can see, while the value I used is higher than the NIST value, it is within the margin of error. To me, this makes it very plausible that the value used in the Wikipedia article was an accurate citation from a preliminary version of the NIST report which is no longer available (the citation was retrieved in 2008 according to the Wikipedia article).
To tie up the loose ends on this, I repeated my calculation using the numbers from the NIST report (I also used the mass from the NIST report which was 4% larger than the value used by Dr. Greening). These values give a kinetic energy of 2.5 GJ at impact for AA11 (2.85 GJ at the upper end of the margin of error) and 3.66 GJ at impact for UA175. Comparing this with the MAXIMUM of 2.45 GJ dissipated in crushing the entire airframe of a Boeing 767 and the 629 MJ required to collapse ALL of the columns on a single floor of the WTC (I believe that this value is specifically for the 95th floor of WTC1) we can see that the aircraft impacts must have done significant damage to the structure of the buildings.
You have no need to doubt your professional ability.
I don’t doubt my professional ability – as I mentioned in my email, I feel that you (and Robert and Duh) were casting aspersions on my professional ability and for that reason I am unwilling to let your statements go unanswered.
Perhaps I should have said you weren’t taking this argument as seriously as you do your professional work.
While I don’t take this as seriously as my professional work, I certainly take this seriously – my name is still attached to this and I stand behind everything I’ve said here. Taking it more seriously would have only resulted in my completing my analysis before reporting the results (instead of reporting my results as I went along) and reporting things in a different order (specifically establishing my methods before reporting my results).
Stay In Your Own Movie,
Bob
I would ask you to leave your Hollywood world where gravitational collapse requires assistance and thermite is the only significant source of heat and join the rest of us in the reality-based world of examining things with the dispassionate eye of science. And please bring Robert and Duh with you, too.
Bob:
my sincere condolences for your loss.
Dear [Slarti],
First, let me apologize for using the phrase ‘fucking liar.’ Perhaps if my father had not passed away a few days earlier I might have used more politically correct language. However, thoughts of one’s own mortality tends to lower one’s threshold tolerance for bullshit.
I’m sure you take your work very seriously else you wouldn’t be in the position you are at present. However the same cannot be said of your analysis in this debate. I doubt very much that you would ever cite wikipedia as a reference for ANY work you do professionally, much less cite such secondary sources without even glancing at the alleged primary sources as such practice is per se unprofessional.
To wit: You said: “In all of my calculations regarding the plane, I used the speed of 404 knots from the NIST report. Once more Bob lies to create a straw man – it must be a day ending in ‘Y’.” My first attempt at bringing this falsehood of yours into specific relief was through a quote from the film Tomstone — “Credat Judaeus apella, non ego.” or ‘Let Appella the Jew believe, not I.’
You say I’m lying, yet you claim to have always used a 404 knots calculation from a NIST report that is no longer available on their website. Yet the 404 knots calculation DOES appear on wikipedia. What can I say?
You have no need to doubt your professional ability. Perhaps I should have said you weren’t taking this argument as seriously as you do your professional work.
Stay In Your Own Movie,
Bob
CC: Turley board.
Bob Esq:
how have you been? Are you ok? I havent seen you post for awhile.
Slarti:
did he read this thread? You covered most of those items and I spoke to a couple of them.
Below is Mr. Urich’s open letter to Richard Gage and A&E for 9/11 Truth:
In a previous post I said that I was not the only one who calculated the energy dissipated in the collapse vs. the energy dissipated in the impact in the manner that I described. As you will see from the short paper reproduced in its entirety below, Gregory Urich makes the same calculation (full disclosure: our numbers differ in the second decimal place – I’m sure that Robert or Duh will cite this as evidence that our calculations are completely different). Mr. Urich submitted this short article, an article on load distribution and load capacity in the core of WTC1* and an open letter to Richard Gage and Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth** to JONES all of which were refused – this is his response:
*This is the paper which I mentioned to Buddha as extending the table metaphor – it also provides actual facts instead of intuition and conjecture about why the core collapsed instead of remaining standing like a spindle. This paper may be found at:
http://www.cool-places.0catch.com/911/loadDistribution_v1.pdf
**I will post this separately in its entirety.
Anyone interested in making the case that explosives or other accelerants were necessary for the WTC collapse should probably start thinking about how they will refute the arguments in the paper ‘What did and did not cause collapse of WTC Twin Towers in New York’. It can be found at:
http://heiwaco.tripod.com/blgb.pdf
And if you think that you can fall back to the WTC7 collapse as an example of controlled demolition, you might want to watch this:
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9072062020229593250#
(Note: this video is one hour long, but well worth it in my opinion.)
Duh posted:
So why am I changing to 480 GJ of GPE instead of 400 GJ? I am using a number from a 2007 paper by Gregory Urich. Why am I choosing this over the number of 400 GJ from the paper that Robert linked? Simply because the paper Robert linked was an earlier (and less detailed) paper by the same author. I’ll be exploring Mr. Urich’s relationship with JONES – the Journal of 9/11 Studies – and some of his other writings in my next post. His paper on the mass and potential energy of the WTC can be found at:
http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200703/GUrich/MassAndPeWtc.pdf
I’ve thought of a hybrid momentum transfer/energy dissipation model of the collapse which would allow for more accurate calculations which I will detail later, but I don’t know when I will be able to take the time to write code to do the calculations (which will be complex) which I am confident will only provide further support to my hypothesis that the towers fell as a result of the aircraft impacts.
Buddha posted (Yay!):
Thanks Buddha, you’ve really whetted my appetite for what’s to come…
I have not forgotten I’ve promised a post here, but life has been in the way. Mea culpa and I’ll go long form as soon as time permits.
But as a preview?
You’ve all been bad, bad boys. Although the degeneration into the ad hominem was by all and fire was met with fire, it’s counter-productive. You guys all need to think audience more and in more general terms considering how long it takes this thread to load. I have a stupid fast connection. Not every reader will. I wonder how many spectators were turned off and tuned out after a long load only to find you three pissing on each other like Irishmen on St. Patrick’s Day? Consider this your admonishment. 😀
Bob – Hope you return soon and all is well.
Robert – Your concerns about chemistry are not without merit.
Slarti – We will be having a discussion about the Method’s foibles, the foibles and pitfalls of reductionist analysis, what I see as the ultimate outcome of reductionist analysis versus the method, and the subtlety of bias built in to every tool ever made.
In general, Slarti has done well on some areas and answered some of my questions about net joules spent, but not all especially since the WTC towers were of a particular design – that of a five legged table (four sheer support walls and a central column connected by a hat truss system). Related to this, I also have real issues with the “gradual collapse” theory rendering a symmetrical result as related to time and sequence, and Slarti’s rather casual dismissal of questions revolving around chemistry – specifically MIC explosives.
Bob is still focused on the quality of evidence and while this is a valid focus, it ends where the evidence ends. This is not, however, fatal to Bob’s core contention which has all along been that the evidence is suspect based on sustained heat of fusion, but it will end with stalemate (as predicted).
Robert’s chemistry issues I’ll address more in detail later as they bear on what I have to say to Slarti.
You know what really pisses me off Slarti? It’s that you jump to a conclusion based one piece of evidence (which you don’t vet properly) and after a cursory glance at the rest of the data through the lens of your confirmation bias you leap to a unwarranted, hyperbolic conclusion and proclaim that this evidence is the missing piece of the puzzle instead of figuring out for yourself what is important and judging theories on their scientific merits.
Ask yourself these questions: If the drywall was the source, where is the calcium? Why is it that only the part you need is found in your sample? Isn’t it just as important to explain the missing parts?
To form a molten iron-oxygen-sulfur eutectic at 1,000°C would require a very high concentration of sulfur. Did you know that sulfur evaporates at 445°C? Which way do you think that gas would travel? How about UP?
Even the author of the paper stated that the severe corrosion and subsequent erosion of Samples 1 [WTC7] and 2 [Towers] are a very unusual event, and that “no clear explanation for the source of the sulfur has been identified”.
While looking at Dr. Greening’s paper on sulfur* I came across a term I didn’t know – ‘eutectic’. Because I actually want to understand everything I can about the science of 9/11, I looked into this term…
*Yet another thing providing absolutely no evidence for the ‘thermite’ theory.
Everyone can probably guess where I went first…
Wiki says:
A eutectic system is a mixture of chemical compounds or elements that has a single chemical composition that solidifies at a lower temperature than any other composition.
So it’s a chemical composition that melts at a lower temperature – interesting, but it’s not like throwing salt on the sidewalk to melt ice or anything… Oh, wait a sec! It’s exactly like throwing salt on the sidewalk to melt ice according to Wikipedia:
Mmmm, ice cream…
But it couldn’t be that common a thing, right? I mean just because salt and ice do it doesn’t mean that it happens in iron or aluminum… Hmm, what do we have here? Tables of melting points of eutectic alloys of aluminum and iron?
www(dot)engineeringtoolbox(dot)com/aluminum-alloys-melting-points-d_1432.html
www(dot)engineeringtoolbox(dot)com/iron-alloys-melting-points-d_1436.html
I note that a eutectic mixture of about 50% iron and 50% aluminum has a melting point of around 1150 °C – that’s almost 400 °C cooler than the melting point of iron on its own… seems like knowing that might be relevant in a discussion about molten iron, huh? (especially in the presence of a whole bunch of aluminum from the exterior panels and an aluminum airframe which almost certainly melted…)
But wait, you say, there’s no evidence of a eutectic mixture of iron and aluminum – and we’re not talking about iron here – we’re talking about steel. Steel has got to be different, right? Well, as I’m sure you know, steel is an alloy of (mainly) iron and carbon… Uh oh, do you think that means… Yup, you guessed it – the melting point of steel depends on how much carbon is in it. Now the eutectic point (the lowest melting point – in this case 1147 °C) is at 4.3% carbon*, which is cast iron rather than steel (which has less than 2% carbon by mass), but it looks like steel can have a melting point more than 200 °C lower than iron (and if extra carbon comes in contact with it the melting point will come down to 1147 °C).
*A phase diagram for the iron-carbon binary system can be found at: thdick(dot)co(dot)uk/images/uploads/Iron-Carbon_Phase_Diagram.png
By now Duh is probably thinking to himself, ‘Slarti promised to show us that steel could melt at 1000 °C, I guess that was just another intellectually dishonest trick’. Well, hold on to your hat because that giant sucking sound you’re about to hear is any evidence you thought you had of temperatures over 1000 °C imploding…
I promised a four word answer to Duh’s question (“How does steel melt at 1000 °C?” and here it is:
Sprinkle sulfur on it.
If you just sprinkle some sulfur on steel (iron, even) that is 1000 °C it will melt just like ice off of your driveway when you sprinkle salt on it. From a phase diagram of the iron-sulfur binary system that I found in an article in the journal of 9/11 studies* (The journal Dr. Jones’ founded that exhibits dubious ethical standards) we see the the eutectic point is at 31.4% sulfur and melts at 994 °C.
*The diagram is on page 4 of: www(dot)journalof911studies(dot)com/volume/200704/JLobdillThermiteChemistryWTC.pdf
So now Bob, Robert, and Duh are probably saying, ‘Yes, that might be true in your ivory tower Slarti, but do you have any evidence that it happened in the real world?’. Well, you guys might want to sit down for this…
Yes. Appendix C of the FEMA report discussed two samples from the rubble. They said the following about sample 1 (from the WTC7 rubble):
And this is what it said about sample 2 (from the rubble of WTC1 or WTC2):
So, what have we learned Dorothy? We just learned that there is no evidence of temperatures over 1000 °C in the rubble and that ‘molten steel’ could very well have been observed at temperatures as low as 700 °C (Lest we forget, it was documented that the external temperature of parts of the WTC7 rubble was 1300 °F five days after the collapse). Plus we learned about eutectics which I find fascinating – the physics of phase changes is very cool! Yes, I know, I’m a geek. 😉
Finally, to forestall the parroting of Dr. Jones’ claim that the sulfur could only have come from thermitic materials, In the paper “Sulfur and the World Trade Center Disaster”* Dr. Greening calculates that the gypsum wallboard (which was rich in sulfur (~19% by weight) and the third most widely used construction material after steel and concrete) was the most significant source of sulfur in the collapse. In fact, assuming that 2 metric tons of Thermate-TH3 (2.0% sulfur by weight) were used as cutter charges, Dr. Greening broke the sulfur sources down as follows (numbers are total SO2 released in kg):
* 911myths.com/Sulfur.pdf
Of course if you have the equivalent of 600 tons of TNT in an unknown thermitic explosive placed in hundreds of pre-drilled boreholes throughout the concrete floor pans that would have been necessary to pulverize the concrete (if gravity didn’t do it), it might be the most significant SO2 source…
You know what really pisses me off Bob? It’s that you jump to a conclusion based one piece of evidence (which you don’t vet properly) and after a cursory glance at the rest of the data through the lens of your confirmation bias you leap to a unwarranted, hyperbolic conclusion and proclaim that a terrible crime has been committed instead of figuring out for yourself what is important and judging theories on their scientific merits.
Duh said:
“It works! 🙂 A degree symbol is °(followed by a semicolon)”
Outstanding! I’ve been wanting to know how to do that for months! 🙂
° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° °
Duh asked:
“What was taking place when the seismic activity started?”
There was a small signal (P-waves) which persisted for about 8s followed by a large signal (S-waves) which lasted another 8s. My interpretation (and, more importantly, the interpretation of experts who’s analysis I have read) is that the start of the small signal corresponds to the initiation of the collapse, the start of the large signal was when large debris began reaching the ground and the end of the large signal was the end of the collapse. (I would guess that the continuing smaller signal was due to persisting vibrations in the ground, but I haven’t seen any expert analysis which addresses this directly.)
On a related note the following quote is from a paper by WY Kim, et al. (scientist at LCSN where one of the seismic recordings of 9/11 was made):
Aside to Robert:
So it seems like seismologists have the same view of the Richter scale that I do (ML stands for local magnitude – the ‘L’ should be in subscript – another name for the Richter scale). Namely that the Richter scale measures the amount of energy in a seismic event and that the amount of seismic energy dissipated in the WTC collapse was minimal.
Duh also asked:
“How does steel melt at 1000°C?”
I’m glad you asked – I have a four word answer, but I’ll give you much more than that in a post later tonight or tomorrow.
Slarti,
According to you:
If the collapse took longer, the energy required to do the damage was greater. If it took less time, the energy required to collapse and pulverize the building was less.
Until you determine that the energy required to collapse and pulverize the building is a constant (which to this point you have failed to do) you’re doing nothing more that making your numbers fit within the conclusion. I can’t buy into that kind of analysis. We all know that the energy REQUIRED to collapse and pulverize the building is a constant. When the mathematician attempts to treat it as a variable, somebody needs to explain the facts to him.
To make matters worse, you’re just making up impact speeds. You have no way of determining anything but the average impact velocity. In addition, if we take your NEW number for energy required to collapse and pulverize the building, we only have 130 GJ remaining. (I’m leaving seismic and sound energy out of it, as the numbers presented here are IMHO worthless).
Remember, the 130 GJ is the result of YOUR number. And I’m giving it all to Kinetic Energy.
KE= .5(mass) times velocity^2
The mass didn’t change, so the velocity must.
The mass of WTC1 was about 200,000,000 Kg
130 GJ/mass/(.5)=130 GJ/200,000,000 Kg/.5=1300=v^2
(Please double check my math. I calculated the mass by working backwards from 400 GJ)
Therefore the average velocity is less than 36 m/s. That’s the only reliable number you can use, and it’s a very generous number. Any video you watch will show lots of massive pieces and other debris being thrown sometimes great distances.