Creative Speculation
In reply to the discussion: The Great Thermite Debate... [View all]William Seger
(11,082 posts)... or that they were magical cold fires, then no, the two hypotheses are certainly not on "equal footing" when it comes to the actual evidence. That's because we certainly DO have plenty evidence for an intense fire, and we know from experimental evidence how hot those can get, and we know from experimental evidence what those temperatures do to steel. Furthermore, we have photographic evidence of the weakening and slow sagging of the floor joists and inward bowing of the perimeter columns in the towers, which "truthers" apparently cannot rationally explain as the result of thermite. On the other hand, we have exactly zero credible evidence for thermite, including zero evidence that such a demolition is even theoretically possible, and indeed there are exactly zero rational reasons to expect to find any such evidence, because the notion that the occupied buildings were rigged with thermite charges is ludicrously implausible. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; claiming that fire is hot does not. If you can call that "equal footing" because NIST didn't prove that fire is hot, then you must have a very long list of very bizarre explanations that are also on such "equal footing," but you're not really giving any rational reason to take any of them seriously OR to reject the simplest and most obvious hypothesis.
However, you specifically stated that NIST didn't have any evidence for any columns reaching 600 degrees C, and I'm telling you that's completely irrelevant because the NIST hypothesis doesn't have any need for the columns to reach those temperatures, so hopefully you will at least drop that strawman from your repertoire.