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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 10/05/2006 : 21:29:46 [Permalink]
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Several times, we have been asked at various times by different people how we can be skeptics without being skeptical of a particular official explanation, report or study conducted by the government or a company that we know lies to us pretty regularly.
We know for example that the Bush administration lied to us to get us into a preemptive war with Iraq. And we know that they continue the lies to keep us in that war. We are even pretty sure that the war was, at the very least, wished for by the neocons well in advance of 9/11. There is evidence that certain people thought that Iraq would be the perfect place to begin the fulfillment of their dream of a pan-americana. And we know that those people have the president's ear.
After 9/11 they were licking their chops to go. The probable fact is that they were hoping that Iraq was behind the attacks and they would have their ticket to ride. But that didn't turn out to be the case. So they connived a way in… There really was a conspiracy to get us into Iraq.
But here is the thing. While they succeeded in getting us into Iraq, they didn't succeed in convincing us of their justification for doing so. Oh sure, they convinced a lot of people of their falsehoods for a while, but that smoke is clearing and the majority of Americans are now concerned about why we are there. What they did is demonstrate to anyone with a brain how inept they really are. And it's dragging them down. Iraq is no longer a popular war.
Now lets suggest that these same inept scoundrels had the brains to concoct a plan to fire up the countries righteous indignation by killing off a few thousand Americans. Their plan would involve the military, the CIA and the FBI. It would involve demolition experts and the cooperation of a bunch of guys willing to give their lives to pull off a plan to get us into a war with Iraq. And they would have had to be willing to kill several thousand Americans to do it. Or, the government was hip to the fact that terrorists were going to fly some airliners into the world trade center, knew exactly what floors they would hit and so made sure of maximum destruction by planting charges on those particular floors (without anyone up there noticing some pretty strange goings on) to make sure of bringing down the buildings, thereby finishing the job the terrorists started…
Back to all of the people involved. After agreeing to kill thousands innocent of Americans, every single one of the conspirators would have to be counted on to not talk. Ever! Ask Nixon how good his conspirators were at keeping secrets. And his conspiracy was nothing when compared to the suggestion that our own government killed thousands of Americans to get us into a war. Oh wait…you can't. He's dead. Never mind. (He did have G. Gordon Liddy. He wouldn't have talked. He could hold his hand for a real long time over a lit candle after all.)
And how about the Iran Contra affair? That never got out…
Oh my, there are so many to choose from. I'm sure there may be one or two that got away from us, but I would be willing to bet that the scale was much smaller than purposely killing thousands of innocent Americans while turning one of the main centers of our economy into rubble.
We skeptics tend to be skeptical of extraordinary claims. And the suggestion that the inept bunch of lunatics who are currently running our country into the ground could think up and pull off a conspiracy of the magnitude and complexity that would be required, without a single person talking or making a mistake is an extraordinary claim.
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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ergo123
BANNED
USA
810 Posts |
Posted - 10/05/2006 : 21:36:42 [Permalink]
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| Indeed. But why not question something for a change... |
No witty quotes. I think for myself. |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 10/05/2006 : 21:45:38 [Permalink]
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| I just did. |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Ghost_Skeptic
SFN Regular
Canada
510 Posts |
 Posted - 10/05/2006 : 21:56:38 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by ergo123
Ghost: One step at a time. Why waste time speculating on who and how until 'if' is determined.
And when the attachments between the floor sections and the vertical members failed, would the lateral load shear the attachments AND snap said vertical members? On a structure as flexible as those towers, don't bet on it. But if it is possible, show me the math.
It wouldn't have to shear "snap" those vertical members - buckling is an elastic failure mode - you have demonstrated your ignorance once again.
quote:
Originally posted by ergo123
Ghost: As for "Believing in something in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is stupidity," I guess anyone who thought the administration was lying about Iraq still having WMD was stupid...
WTF Your conclusion is the result some form of logic with which I (or anyone else in their right mind is unfamiliar).
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"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. / You can send a kid to college but you can't make him think." - B.B. King
History is made by stupid people - The Arrogant Worms
"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism." - William Osler
"Religion is the natural home of the psychopath" - Pat Condell
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter" - Thomas Jefferson |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26024 Posts |
Posted - 10/05/2006 : 22:05:20 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by ergo123
many of dave's questions deal with issues other than energy transfer--the issue i'm focusing on first; specifically whether the collapse would continue past the first impacted floor.
Ross' analysis uses the wrong model to determine that very thing. Since he states in no uncertain terms,An initiation mechanism involving a total and instantaneous loss of all load bearing ability on one storey, sufficient to cause a 3.7m drop under full gravitational acceleration followed by a neat impact is not credible.- Page 8 then he knows that his entire scenario is not credible. The first reason Ross might be considering the transfer of the load through the columns - and the columns alone - is if the collapse happened so neatly that the straight portions above and below each buckled column landed right smack on each other. He knows this is completely out of the question.
The other reason to consider the transfer through the columns alone would be if Ross thinks that each individual floor is strong enough to support the weight of the upper 16 stories - and thus transfer those forces to the columns supporting the floor. Ross doesn't describe - at all - any considerations about the strength of the floor systems. Not one word.
Ross obviously assumes that the "first impacted floor" can and would be able to support the entire 58,000 metric tons he cites from the one-and-only reference he uses, Bazant & Zhou's 2001 article. Even though Ross' article was published in June of this year, he utterly fails to reference (for example), the NIST NCSTAR 1-1A (September, 2005), where on page 19 (page 55 of the PDF), one can see a scanned original document (figure 2-7) showing the design criteria for the floors to be only 142 pounds per square foot. That's all the deadload (42 psf) plus twice the live load as required by the building code. Given approximately 32,000 square feet on a floor (outside the core), the design criteria call for a maximum single-floor load of just 1,454 metric tons, or only 5.9% of the upper 16 story mass Ross is assuming.
In other words, for Ross' model to be accurate, the as-built floors would have to be over 17 times stronger than the design called for, which isn't credible. It is surprising that the designers called for the floors to be twice as strong as the building codes mandated in the first place. Another 17-fold increase in strength between design and implementation would be unheard of.
In reality, the "impacted" floors themselves could provide only minimal resistance to the upper block of falling building, which also didn't land "neatly" on top of the columns it had become disconnected from. Column ends would have punctured flooring in both the upper set of stories and the lower (depending on which face "landed" outside of which), turning the inside and outside of the building into a large morass of twisted steel and broken concrete, falling as gravity dictates.
Ross' model assumes none of this will happen, and assumes the floors to be strong enough to support seventeen times their design load. Ross must know that his model cannot be correct.
This is why I asked you, ergo, what you think would stop the top section of the building from falling. The "first impacted floor" would simply be decimated by the impact, and transfer very little of its load to the columns holding it up, which would be in the process of getting torn from their spandrel plates, anyway, by the force of the other columns and spandrel plates falling through them (since the top portion of the buildings tilted).
As I said before, Ross has nicely debunked a fictional collapse scenario with his own fictional collapse scenario. Ross' magically strong floors and precision-buckling columns have never existed in the real world, and he must know it.
To take Ross at his word, his only intent was to debunk the even-more-magical "floating floors" model used by Bazant & Zhou (which they called "simple"), which was published in the ASCE journal, and so was never the "official" collapse theory in the first place. You, ergo, seem to be thinking that Ross' model is a rigorous application of real-world physics, contradictory to the "government's conspiracy theory," but even Ross must know that's not the case.
By implication, ergo, you are claiming that Ross' model is the correct one to use for modeling the actual buildings and the actual collapse. As such, the burden of proof is on you to actually provide supporting evidence to show that just the floors were, indeed, strong enough to support the weight of 16 more of them - even without 3.7 meters of free-fall, near free-fall, or even 3.7 meters of slow descent. In the real world, no matter how slowly you lowered the top 16 floors, the 17th wouldn't be able to take the weight if the columns didn't match up precisely. You are claiming that they could, so you need to provide evidence for your claim. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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ergo123
BANNED
USA
810 Posts |
Posted - 10/05/2006 : 22:27:42 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Ghost_Skeptic
quote:
Originally posted by ergo123
Ghost: One step at a time. Why waste time speculating on who and how until 'if' is determined.
And when the attachments between the floor sections and the vertical members failed, would the lateral load shear the attachments AND snap said vertical members? On a structure as flexible as those towers, don't bet on it. But if it is possible, show me the math.
It wouldn't have to shear "snap" those vertical members - buckling is an elastic failure mode - you have demonstrated your ignorance once again.
quote:
Originally posted by ergo123
Ghost: As for "Believing in something in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is stupidity," I guess anyone who thought the administration was lying about Iraq still having WMD was stupid...
WTF Your conclusion is the result some form of logic with which I (or anyone else in their right mind is unfamiliar).
No, Ghost. We know the vertical members DID snap--most into 30' sections. My question is HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN? The attachments are much less strong than the box columns. If they were sheared off the box columns they could not transfer energy to the box columns after the shear. We'd be left with a pile of rubble on the ground and 287 very long beams. But we weren't. We had lots of steel beams but it was in 30' long sections. |
No witty quotes. I think for myself. |
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ergo123
BANNED
USA
810 Posts |
Posted - 10/05/2006 : 22:42:43 [Permalink]
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| DaveW: Finally you are doing what i asked in my original post--providing evidence (not just your opinion) that Ross' model is inappropriate. You still have some errors in your assessment, but at least it looks close. Why did it take you 10 pages to provide ths kind of info. |
No witty quotes. I think for myself. |
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Ghost_Skeptic
SFN Regular
Canada
510 Posts |
Posted - 10/05/2006 : 23:29:01 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by ergo123
quote:
Originally posted by Ghost_Skeptic
quote:
Originally posted by ergo123
Ghost: One step at a time. Why waste time speculating on who and how until 'if' is determined.
And when the attachments between the floor sections and the vertical members failed, would the lateral load shear the attachments AND snap said vertical members? On a structure as flexible as those towers, don't bet on it. But if it is possible, show me the math.
It wouldn't have to shear "snap" those vertical members - buckling is an elastic failure mode - you have demonstrated your ignorance once again.
quote:
Originally posted by ergo123
Ghost: As for "Believing in something in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is stupidity," I guess anyone who thought the administration was lying about Iraq still having WMD was stupid...
WTF Your conclusion is the result some form of logic with which I (or anyone else in their right mind is unfamiliar).
No, Ghost. We know the vertical members DID snap--most into 30' sections. My question is HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN? The attachments are much less strong than the box columns. If they were sheared off the box columns they could not transfer energy to the box columns after the shear. We'd be left with a pile of rubble on the ground and 287 very long beams. But we weren't. We had lots of steel beams but it was in 30' long sections.
I know the vertical sections snapped - in the real world elastic column buckling is usually followed by plastic deformation and often comlete failure.
As Dave and possibly others have pointed out - read the NIST report.
The floor sections stabilize the vertical columns.
The 287 long beams are some more your strawmen. |
"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. / You can send a kid to college but you can't make him think." - B.B. King
History is made by stupid people - The Arrogant Worms
"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism." - William Osler
"Religion is the natural home of the psychopath" - Pat Condell
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter" - Thomas Jefferson |
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ergo123
BANNED
USA
810 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2006 : 04:59:11 [Permalink]
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| why do you consider the vertical members strawmen? and if the floors have been sheared off those members, what is the source of the deforming force? |
No witty quotes. I think for myself. |
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GeeMack
SFN Regular
USA
1093 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2006 : 05:29:52 [Permalink]
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Okay, ergo123, since you apparently aren't willing to describe your "theory", we'll accept that you lied when you said you had one. So you've got no theory and no evidence to support your suspicion that a controlled demolition may have been involved, and you don't have the integrity to simply admit that or to be honest. You've got no balls, ergo123. All you have is doubt based on ignorance. And since so far you refuse to become properly informed, even that seems unlikely to change.
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Ghost_Skeptic
SFN Regular
Canada
510 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2006 : 06:10:25 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by ergo123
why do you consider the vertical members strawmen? and if the floors have been sheared off those members, what is the source of the deforming force?
Gravity - you clearly have no unsderstanding of buckling - I do - I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering. |
"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. / You can send a kid to college but you can't make him think." - B.B. King
History is made by stupid people - The Arrogant Worms
"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism." - William Osler
"Religion is the natural home of the psychopath" - Pat Condell
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter" - Thomas Jefferson |
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ergo123
BANNED
USA
810 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2006 : 06:34:36 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by GeeMack
Okay, ergo123, since you apparently aren't willing to describe your "theory", we'll accept that you lied when you said you had one. So you've got no theory and no evidence to support your suspicion that a controlled demolition may have been involved, and you don't have the integrity to simply admit that or to be honest. You've got no balls, ergo123. All you have is doubt based on ignorance. And since so far you refuse to become properly informed, even that seems unlikely to change.
And if a tree falls in a forest with no one around it doesn't make a sound...
I have a theory (which I thought would be obvious by now--the towers were brought down by controlled demol;ition...)--but I am testing that theory one step at a time. The first step is to determine if, given the damage from the planes and the non-raging fires, the buildings could have collapsed on their own, or whether they would have needed help beyond the force of gravity. If it is found that the building could have fallen on their own, the next step is to determine if a gravity-only collapse would account for the end results we saw at ground zero (i.e., lots of 30' sections of steel box columns, tons of pulverized concrete and other materials, building debris (including large sections of steel beam) thrown 100's of feet horizontally, etc.). If it is found that they needed help beyond the force of gravity, the next step will be to try to determine if the kind of help offered by controlled demolition would account for the end results we saw at ground zero.
You see, just proving the towers COULD have fallen on their own is not proof that explosives were not used. |
No witty quotes. I think for myself. |
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ergo123
BANNED
USA
810 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2006 : 06:36:28 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Ghost_Skeptic
quote:
Originally posted by ergo123
why do you consider the vertical members strawmen? and if the floors have been sheared off those members, what is the source of the deforming force?
Gravity - you clearly have no unsderstanding of buckling - I do - I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering.
Gravity? Gravity would cause the vertical members to snap every 30 feet? Please explain more!! |
No witty quotes. I think for myself. |
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Starman
SFN Regular
Sweden
1613 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2006 : 06:41:19 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by ergo123
You see, just proving the towers COULD have fallen on their own is not proof that explosives were not used.
Or that god did not smite them with an invisible hammer.
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2006 : 07:01:23 [Permalink]
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ergo123 said:
quote:
You see, just proving the towers COULD have fallen on their own is not proof that explosives were not used.
The sheer ignorance demonstrated by you is staggering. Your amature attempt to befuddle people with fake physics is now, by your own admission, nothing more than a distraction to set people up for your nonsensical and moronic belief that the towers were destroyed by controlled demolition?
All of these last 10 pages are pointless if you really think that controlled demolition was used on the WTC.
Sadly, for you, it is easily demonstrated that no such demolition was used. The time, effort, obviousness, number of people, and ammount of materials required to implement such a thing entirely eliminate the possibility that the towers could have been rigged in secret.
If you want to prove that the towers were destroyed by controlled demolition, you need to account for those things. All of the time you have spent defending Ross's obviously wrong conclusions has been completely wasted. Because it doesn't matter. Even if he was absolutely correct, you still don't have any evidence to support your claim.
Why don't you start off with how, exactly, you think the towers could have been rigged for demolition in secret. How could the hundreds of people, obvious alterations to the building interior, tons of explosives, and miles of detonation wiring gone unnoticed for the days/weeks it would take to set up?
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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The physics behind the collapses
Topic Locked
