For the undying 9/11 MORONIC STEEL = AIR ARGUMENT

[William Seger]

14. Nope, not even close

> More than 2800F, would presumably be enough to melt construction steel...

Yes, it would, but since that temperature would be completely unexpected in the debris pile, shouldn't we first verify that claim before presuming anything, much less presuming a preposterously implausible controlled demolition? The only known reports of temperature readings taken from a helicopter were those done by the USGS:

http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-01-0405/ofr-01-0405.html

AVIRIS records the near-infrared signature of heat remotely. The accompanying maps are false color images that show the core affected area around the World Trade Center. Initial analysis of these data revealed a number of thermal hot spots on September 16 in the region where the buildings collapsed 5 days earlier. Analysis of the data indicates temperatures greater than 800F. Over 3 dozen hot spots appear in the core zone. By September 23, only 4, or possibly 5, hot spots are apparent, with temperatures cooler than those on September 16.

It was 800F, not 2800F, so there is no reason to expect to find any molten steel in the debris pile; so we shouldn't be surprised that there is no actual evidence that any was found. We don't need to explain things that didn't happen.

> By the way, what do you think of Cole's opinion that even simply weakening of the steel on a few of the upper floors by jet fuel and office fires could not possibly have been enough to cause the entire building collapse in the manner observed on the numerous videos posted on Youtube etc.

Cole's opinion is based on ignorance and faulty analysis having virtually nothing to do with happened. It really isn't hard to understand why the buildings collapsed, unless you're determined not to, and physicists and structural engineers who know what they're talking about can explain it pretty well. You should look into it.

> Interestingly enough the engineering and scientific geniuses at NIST, didn't seek to further explain the observed behaviour of the building from that point on (i.e. after collapse initiation), but weaseled out of providing any further explanation by simply referring interested persons to a paper written by a Dr. Zdenek Bazant.

> Dr. Bazant's in his paper posited a bizarre "crush-down crush-up" collapse in which the upper portion of the building (largely undamaged and roughly 20 or so stories) falling through the damaged 5 or so stories (where the steel had been weakened by the jet fuel and office fires) then proceeded to act as a pile driver on the much larger and sturdier built lower portion of the building. (The constriction steal in the columns got significantly thicker and stronger the closer you got to ground level.) Once the top section had pile driven itself all the way to ground level, it then suffered a supposed "crush-up" collapse where it destroyed itself from the ground up, leaving just the smoking ruins.

Bullshit. I have yet to talk to a "truther" who understands much of anything about the Bazant paper(s), but since you're regurgitating bullshit from "truther" sites, we need to get the facts straight first: The Bazant analysis that NIST referred to did not include the "bizarre crush-down crush-up" model. There's nothing "bizarre" about that model to people who understand it (so you're admitting that you don't), but it's irrelevant anyway because Bazant did not publish that model until after the NIST report was published. The analysis NIST referred to was simply an argument about energy: There was no way for the building structure to absorb the kinetic energy unleashed by that much falling mass. If you want to dispute that argument, I'm afraid you will first need to learn what it is. After 14 years, nobody has ever refuted that energy argument on valid technical grounds (including Gordon Ross, but more about him later). As you demonstrate, "truthers" typically try to avoid that energy argument by trying to switch to an irrelevant argument about the irrelevant crush-down/crush-up model -- and then they try to argue against that by completely misrepresenting it, as you then go on to demonstrate:

> Apparently Dr. Bazant for all his high falluting qualifications never took Physics 101 (or maybe it was so long he forgot the material covered in his "Intro to Basic Physics" course) and forgot about Newton's Laws of Motion and more specifically Newton's 3rd Law: "To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." According to the 3rd law whatever forces were acting on the lower part of the building caused by the falling 20 story section, equal forces would have to have been acting on the falling section itself.

I realize you're only parroting the bullshit you've read on "truther" sites, so don't take this personally, but some people who took Physics 101 and then think they're qualified to argue with one of the world's foremost theoreticians in structural mechanics are apparently unafraid of looking like complete idiots. All they succeed in demonstrating is that knowing Newton's Third Law and applying it correctly in a given situation are two completely different things. What Bazant's model took into account (and what you and Gage's "experts" are ignoring) is that there were three sections interacting, not two: the bottom, the falling top, and the debris layer between them which was also falling and which got larger with each consumed floor. Yes, the forces at the boundary between the debris layer and the bottom were equal and opposite, and so were the forces between the debris layer and the top, but those two boundaries were not equal to each other. The difference was the mass and momentum of the debris layer itself, which your Physics 101 graduates seem to think disappeared into an alternate universe. People who don't understand that are manifestly unqualified to debate a bright high school student, much less Dr. Bazant. But again, debating Bazant's crush-down/crush-up model is completely irrelevant to NIST's referencing his energy argument, anyway. If the issue is whether or not the building should have been expected to halt the collapse, it simply doesn't matter whether or not the top block remained intact, so there's no point in arguing about it. All that mattered was the amount of kinetic energy release by the falling mass, and how much the structure could absorb, and Bazant's argument is overwhelmingly accepted within the structural engineering community, Gage's handful of crackpots notwithstanding. If they want to attempt to refute it, they'll need more than imaginary physics.

> Talking about liars and frauds, the NIST engineers and their partner in obfuscastion and misdirection, Bazant, seem to fit the bill quite well themselves.

And yet, the best you can do to support that slander is abject bullshit.

> For a more detailed analysis of Bazant's theory see: (Gordon Ross paper)

Ross made a big splash on the 2007 "truther" scene with a paper claiming that "momentum transfer" during the collapse should have dissipated the kinetic energy that Bazant says should have destroyed the structure. To support that argument, Ross presented an "energy balance" analysis showing energy sources and sinks. It was an interesting analysis, at least until several people noticed a glaring error: He had one value for the energy lost in the inelastic collision, and then other values for energy lost in bending steel and pulverizing concrete. The problem is, the energy lost in the inelastic collision was the energy that went into deforming the steel and pulverizing concrete -- that's why that energy was lost -- so he was counting the same energy twice. With that error corrected, his energy balance argument actually showed that the collapse could not have been stopped. That must have been an embarrassing error for a mechanical engineer, but Ross toughed it out for a while and presented one or two more arguments about the momentum transfer aspect, such as the one you quote. Unfortunately, Ross seems to have disappeared after another glaring error was spotted in the whole basis of his arguments, which was that the columns were strong enough to redistribute all that momentum. Here's where Ross's lack of expertise in structural engineering betrayed him (and where he could have learned something from Bazant): It is a simple fact, fairly obvious once someone points it out, that a column cannot transmit more force than it takes to destroy that column, so columns would fail before they could transmit the amounts of momentum that Ross imagined.

As much as "truthers" would love to argue that the towers must have been controlled demolitions because a gravity-driven collapse was impossible, fourteen years of trying have produced absolutely nothing but imaginary physics. As I said elsewhere, if Gage gets his "independent investigation" and brings such bullshit to the table as "expert opinion," I'll gladly take very short odds on the outcome. Believe it or don't; I'm looking forward to some profitable bets.