Showing posts with label 9/11 debunkers WTC 7. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 9/11 debunkers WTC 7. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

The World Trade Center WAS a Controlled Demolition

Back in February of 2009, debunker Mark “Gravy” Roberts announced that the “9/11 ‘truth’ movement has dried up and blown away,” and that he wouldn’t be adding anything new to his site “unless big news arises.” Some of the “big news” Roberts last added was an honest mistake made by a contributor to this blog. Roberts had not added anything since March of 09, which is odd considering that two years worth of big news has occurred in the 9/11 truth community.

Well, after almost two years, Roberts has finally added something new to his site. He has uploaded an old video he made back in 2007 called “WTC Not a Demolition,” which is currently available at 911myths.com. He claims that his video “shows how absurd those claims (about controlled demolition) are from an audiovisual standpoint.” After reviewing his video myself, I have found that this claim is not even remotely true. Many of the arguments Roberts makes in his video are addressed in my extensive critique of the 9/11 Mysteries Viewer’s Guide. His video presents itself as offering sound refutations to controlled demolition theories. Here I will show that his video amounts to nothing more than petty insults and half-baked arguments. To address each section, I will use the video’s online index.

• 01:10 South tower inward bowing of exterior wall, no smoke-disturbing detonations precede collapse

The first section of Roberts’ video deals with the inward bowing of the South Tower’s perimeter columns. He claims that the ejections of debris we see coming from the building only appear after the collapse began. Based on this, he asserts that this proves that the ejections are being caused by the collapse and not vice versa. First of all, we have videos of ejections coming from the WTC before the collapse begins here and here. Second off, this argument about the inward bowing highlights a fundamental error Roberts constantly makes throughout his video: he assumes that the Towers would have been set up and executed like a traditional demolition. This shows his obvious ignorance of the possibilities of a covert demolition scenario that may have been set up for the buildings. Jim Hoffman has outlined a scenario where the inward bowing of the Towers’ columns would not only have been part of the demolition scenario, but also would have been an essential element:

Excerpt from “A Hypothetical Blasting Scenario: A Plausible Theory Explaining the Controlled Demolition of the Twin Towers Using Aluminothermic Incendiaries and Explosives with Wireless Ignition Means

Stage 1: Thermate Melts and Corrodes Core Steelwork

During Stage 1, extending from up to 10 minutes before T-0, thermate coatings on key parts of the core structure steelwork are ignited via the wireless ignition control system. The two areas attacked are: the core columns on a few floors below the crash zone, just above where most of the columns transition from box columns to wide-flange beams; and the inner portions of the hat truss that connect it to the core.

The thermal/corrosive attack on these two portions of the structure leaves the entire block of the core structure above the upper mechanical equipment floor "floating", with no major steel members to transfer its gravity loads to the lower portion of the core or to the perimeter walls: it is now supported by the web-trussed floor diaphragms. The upper core block now exerts massive inward forces on the perimeter walls due to the high degree of leverage involved in the translation of the core block's gravity loads into pulling on the perimeter walls. It is these forces that produce the inward bowing of portions of perimeter walls that NIST claims are due merely to the sagging of floor diaphragms still supported by the core.

As Hoffman also writes in his essay, “A key objective is to get the top of the Tower to move before explosive action is clearly evident to onlookers outside the building.” Thus, engineered in the correct way, the inward bowing of the Towers’ perimeter columns could very well have been an essential element in initiating the collapses.

• 01:53 South tower fake collapse audio promoted by truthers as real

The next section of Roberts’ video deals with the audio of the South Tower’s collapse. He shows a video of the collapse with fake audio and claims truthers have used this video as evidence. While the audio in that video is clearly fake, new videos of the WTC collapses have been released through FOIA requests, and show that explosive sounds are clearly audible.

• 02:32 What actual explosive demolitions look and sound like

Roberts then proceeds to show a long series of demolitions to emphasize how loud traditional demolitions are. Again, Roberts makes the error of assuming that the Towers were set up as traditional demolitions. The “sounds of explosions” issue has been raised by numerous debunkers. Before addressing the sound of the Towers’ collapses, let’s first look at how relevant the sound issue actually is.

According to the NFPA 921 Guide, the actual “sound” of an explosive does not define an explosive event.

Although an explosion is almost always accompanied by the production of a loud noise, the noise itself is not an essential element in the definition of an explosion. The generation and violent escape of gases are the primary criteria of an explosion. –NFPA 921 Guide, Chapter 18 - Explosions, 18.1

Therefore, by the standards of the National Fire Protection Association, the “sound” of an explosion does not define an explosion. This of course makes sense, as sound evidence would technically fall under the category of witness evidence, as sounds have to be attested to by witnesses in an investigation. What should be tested for is the forensic evidence for explosives. NIST has admitted numerous times that they never tested for residues of explosives or incendiaries, and they dismissed the idea of explosives being used based on the “sound” argument.

“Was the steel tested for explosives or thermite residues?”

NIST did not test for the residue of these compounds in the steel.

“Did investigators consider the possibility that an explosion caused or contributed to the collapse of WTC 7?”

Yes, this possibility was investigated carefully. NIST concluded that blast events inside the building did not occur and found no evidence supporting the existence of a blast event. In addition, no blast sounds were heard on the audio tracks of video recordings during the collapse of WTC 7 or reported by witnesses.

If other investigations were carried out by NIST and Roberts’ standards, then the police would have to rule out being shot as a cause of death if nobody hears a gunshot, even if the person has a very obvious bullet wound.

Even with videos that have the clearest audio from 9/11, it is probably still hard to appreciate just how loud the Towers’ collapses really were without actually being there. Although we cannot be sure of exactly how many types of explosives were used, we have evidence of one explosive: nanothermite. The authors of the Active Thermitic Material paper mention that in April 2001 the American Chemical Society held a symposium on the defense applications of nanomaterials in which they stated:

At this point in time, all of the military services and some DOE and academic laboratories have active R&D programs aimed at exploiting the unique properties of nanomaterials that have potential to be used in energetic formulations for advanced explosives…. nanoenergetics hold promise as useful ingredients for the thermobaric (TBX) and TBX-like weapons, particularly due to their high degree of tailorability with regards to energy release and impulse management.

The authors then go on to point out that:

The feature of ‘impulse management’ may be significant. It is possible that formulations may be chosen to have just sufficient percussive effect to achieve the desired fragmentation while minimizing the noise level.

In other words these materials, in any form that they are used, are perfect for covert demolition in which one would want to reduce the loud pops of conventional demolitions.

Of course, other types of explosives could have been used, and explosive sounds would probably not have been 100% preventable. However, Jim Hoffman has suggested a way that the demolitions would not have produced distinct explosive sounds.

Regardless of what Roberts believes, the collapse of the Towers produced enormous explosive sounds that could be heard miles away.

• 06:17 North tower audio deception in Loose Change

Roberts then proceeds to take issue with a video of the North Tower’s collapse in the film Loose Change. While I agree that the shaking was not caused by some pre-collapse explosion, explosive sounds can be heard in videos of the North Tower’s collapse.

• 07:24 "I heard a bomb" – witnesses using figures of speech to describe loud sounds. Includes interview with Hursley Lever, witness to the north tower elevator shaft fireball.

Roberts’ video next goes on to examine the issue of the witness testimony of explosions on 9/11. He claims that out of all the testimonies he’s examined, only 11% described the Towers’ collapses as explosions. However, Graeme MacQueen has estimated a higher percentage:

I do not know whether the FDNY witnesses constitute a representative sample of 9/11 witnesses, but it is possible that they do. Certainly, there is no lack of testimony to explosions from those outside the FDNY, and I see no obvious reason why firefighters and medics would be more prone than others to feel that they were witnessing explosions. If they constitute a representative sample, then a minimum of 23% of all witnesses to the Towers’ collapses appear to have perceived, or thought they perceived, explosions that brought down the Towers.

The common objection to MacQueen’s analysis is that he has taken numerous testimonies out of context. However, MacQueen has addressed these objections. Roberts also shows the testimony of Hursely Lever to demonstrate that truthers use some testimonies of witnesses who are using a figure of speech. Still, this is only one person’s testimony, and numerous other witnesses are quite clear about what they heard. He also shows a crane collapse as evidence that non-explosive events can produce explosive sounds. Again, none of the objections Roberts has raised warrants refusing to test for explosive residues. As stated by firefightersfor911truth.org:

Explosion sounds can be explained away. But, only after a thorough investigation. When there is this much witness testimony, evidence, and explosive use by terrorists on this very same complex, there is no excuse for refusing to test for explosive residue.

• 09:35 Use and effects of steel cutter charges.

The next section of the video deals with how conventional demolitions are set up. Again, the Towers were obviously far from conventional demolitions. The demolitions of the Towers could have been set up in any way needed. That’s why it’s called a CONTROLLED demolition.

• 11:55 A few pounds of cutter charges = huge boom and flash.

Roberts then expands on this point by showing how explosive demolitions create loud explosions and bright flashes. We have already covered how the sound levels could have been decreased, and that witnesses did report enormous explosions that could be heard for miles. And the fact of the matter is that flashes have been found in videos of the South Tower’s collapse. But this is an irrelevant point, as bright flashes do not always occur in controlled demolitions.

Roberts also raises the point about how many pounds of explosives would have been needed to demolish the Towers. However, as civil engineer Jonathan Cole has demonstrated, a minimum amount of thermite/thermate could have been used, even when it has not been formulated to be explosive.

• 13:16 Structural Engineer, collapse expert, and Weidlinger Associates WTC investigator Matthys Levy on conspiracy theories

Roberts then decides to reference Matthys Levy and the Weidlinger Associates investigation. This may not be the wisest decision, as the Weidlinger report strongly contradicts the NIST report on the collapse of the WTC.

Roberts also claims that truthers have misrepresented the size of the fires in the Towers. Roberts claims “Conspiracists like to claim that the fires were almost out just before collapse.” For someone who accuses people of misrepresenting others’ claims, Roberts does a fine job of doing that himself. What most in the Truth Movement claim is that the fires in the SOUTH Tower were almost out before collapse. And videos and photographs confirm this. Roberts believes the explosives wouldn’t have been able to survive the plane impacts and the fires. This is also false.

• 14:37 North tower "squibs" compared to explosive blasts

The next section of Roberts’ video deals with the squibs from the Towers. He asserts the dubious claim constantly repeated by debunkers and NIST that these squibs were simply air pressure ejected from the Towers. He points to one squib and claims that it is not blasting out, but flowing out of the building. However, squibs can eject from buildings at varying speeds, depending on how the gases are ejected from the explosives. Also, this one squib should not be representative of all the squibs from the Towers, as physicist David Chandler has shown that several of these ejections did shoot out of the building the exact way explosives behave, starting out strong and then loosing speed.

Also, careful calculations done by Dr. Crockett Grabbe show that the horizontal ejection rate of these squibs is disproportional to the vertical fall rate.

The video frame in Figure 4 of the World Trade Center North Tower taken by KTLA channel 5 news shows a "squib" -- a line of ejecting material from the tower -- right before it collapsed. Such squib ejections are driven by massive overpressure inside the building relative to the atmospheric pressure outside, and that overpressure is created by explosions. A number of squibs were observed coming from all 3 of Buildings 1, 2, and 7 a short second or 2 after each one started to collapse, and there are several websites that show photograph of them on all 3 buildings. The one displayed as Figure 4 shows ejecting material (bits of material large enough to have little air resistance) streaming out of the North Tower, which has traveled a distance from the tower in the horizontal direction, whereas the distance it has descended in the vertical direction because of gravitation pull is small.

Note the quantitative information that can be gathered from the ejection photograph in Figure 4. We can estimate that, at the front end, the ejecting plume has apparently fallen no more than roughly 3 feet (an estimate that might have up to a factor of 2 in error), whereas the horizontal distance of the front from building is about 1/3 the width of the North Tower, or about 70 feet. If we neglect air friction resistance over the length of the streamer, from fall distance s=0.5gt2, where g=32 feet/sec2 is the gravitational acceleration, we estimate 0.43 sec as the time since the front end first ejected from the building. That means that material in that squib is traveling horizontally at roughly 163 feet/sec, which means the squibs are effectively "bullets" of bits of material produced by the explosions.

Roberts also references calculations done by Dr. Zdenek Bazant et al to explain away the squibs. Kevin Ryan, in his comprehensive analysis of the squibs, has this to say about Dr. Bazant’s calculations.

Bazant, Le, Greening and Benson estimated the velocity of escaping air to be as high as 340 m/s, or 1100 fps. Of course they were trying to establish an argument for the bursts having reached the speed of sound, in order to explain away the witness testimony to explosions.

Several refutations of Bazant’s work have been published by members of the Truth Movement.

• 16:52 Explosive demolitions eject debris, sometimes dangerously.

At this point Roberts asserts that explosives would have caused shrapnel to be ejected everywhere out of the Towers at high speeds. He claims that explosives powerful enough to destroy the Towers would have done this. However, as even his video shows, there are ways of preventing that from happening. One of the ways this could have been prevented is by limiting the areas attacked by explosives in the Towers. Mechanical engineer Tony Szamboti has suggested that the two main sections of the Towers that were attacked were the outer core columns and the corner perimeter columns.

This could very well have limited the amount of small debris ejected far and fast. Regardless, Dr. Grabbe has shown evidence that much of the debris from the Towers was ejected great distances.

A table below summarizes some typical values of α for various material parameters.

Table: Values of α for selected material parameters




Solving (1) for v(t) by separation of variables yields the downward velocity vd and downward distance y:

(4) vd(t)= (g/α )1/2 tanh [(g α )1/2t]

(5) y(t) = (1/α) ln cosh [(g α )1/2t]

So where does this squib material hit the ground? If we take y to be the height of the ejection, we can solve the last equation for t, the time the material remains in the air. Multiply that t by the horizontal velocity vh of the squib material, and we have the horizontal distance x it travels. The equation of motion for the horizontal movement of the material is:

(6) a = dv/dt = - α v2

which solves by separation of variables, yielding:

(7) vh(t)= vo/(1 + α vot)

(8) x(t) = (1/α)

ln (1 + α vot) where vo is the velocity of initial ejection from the tower. Taking t to be the time the material remains in the air from (5) (solving for t after setting y=h) gives x(t) = xhit, the distance the material travels away from the tower. Graphs of that distance xhit versus the α for the material are shown in Figures 5 and 6 for ejections from about 1304 feet (400 meters) and 489 feet (150 m).

Thus, Dr. Grabbe shows that much of the material from the ejections would have been shot out up to 1/4 mile or more from the Towers.

• 18:05 Les Robertson, Twin Towers head engineer, on conspiracy claims

Roberts proceeds to quote WTC engineer Leslie Robertson and his objections to the idea that the Twin Towers were demolished. Gregg Roberts has addressed Robertson’s statements.

ROBERTSON: …I've not participated in the NIST Report directly, although of course I've read it, as have thousands of other structural engineers and other interested persons.

GR: Robertson offers no evidence to support this claim about how many people have read the NIST report. NIST published about 10,000 pages about the tower collapses. The Summary Report itself took up 248 pages plus 43 pages of front matter. Jim Hoffman’s critique of the Report notes that the Summary Report flatly contradicted some of the most important evidence presented deep in the 10,000 pages. Whistleblower Kevin Ryan calls all this the TiNRAT approach: “They’ll Never Read All This.”

Note the compound category, in which the relative numbers for the two categories of people who have read the Report are not provided. Maybe it’s three structural engineers and thousands of 9/11 skeptics! But as usual throughout the interview, we’re supposed to believe this because of who Robertson is and because he speaks confidently, rather than because of evidence and logic.
He is clearly implying that if only a few engineers have publicly challenged the official story, they are unlikely to be right. The idea of taking a majority vote of experts appeals to Americans’ sense of democratic values, but it has absolutely nothing to do with who is more likely to be right.

ROBERTSON: But the collapse mechanism of the Trade Center is as we had anticipated it would be when we first designed it. It was not – please don't misunderstand me – it was not designed to collapse. But any prudent engineer looking at the future has to think about, what are the mechanisms that cause collapse, and how to go about strengthening the building so as to minimize that circumstance. So sure, we spent time looking at that kind of event, and that which was observable from the photographs and so forth is reasonably consistent with that which we thought would be the case.

HOST: Why did it fall so straight down?

ROBERTSON: Well, that's kind of the nature of that kind of failure.

GR: This statement is reminiscent of the pre-scientific Aristotle: "It's in the nature of things to fall.” Throughout this response (continued below) Robertson says “uh” and makes other stuttering sounds and false starts more than in any other statement during the show. He misspeaks, saying that burning a sofa creates smoke capacity.

• 19:35 WTC 7: deceptive claims made by conspiracists, collapse expected by media

After almost 20 minutes, Roberts finally addresses the issue of World Trade Center 7. He starts out by showing a clip from Loose Change that compares the collapse of WTC7 with a controlled demolition. Roberts criticizes this part of the film because the audio of the demolition was omitted. Again, we have already addressed the sound issue. And as it turns out, David Chandler has found evidence of explosive sounds preceding WTC7’s collapse in the very video Roberts uses to claim that no explosions were heard.

Roberts then criticizes Dr. Steven Jones and his claims about squibs ejecting from the building. While I agree that the southwest corner of WTC7 showed no ejections, the north side of the facade clearly exhibited ejections of dust and debris. Of course, Roberts simply hand waves away any ejections from the building, claiming that it was due to… you guessed it. Air pressure. However, any pulverized debris would not have been formed until the building had already collapsed to that level. And the ejections could not have been smoke from the fires since, according to the NIST report on WTC7, the fires never reached that level of the building and the sprinklers were working on the upper floors. Also, the smoke from the lower floors could not have reached that level of the building, according to the FEMA report.

Concrete floor slabs provided vertical compartmentalization to limit fire and smoke spread between floors. -FEMA report, section 5.3.3

Roberts also makes issue of the east penthouse collapsing into WTC7, not realizing that the collapse of the penthouse is problematic enough on its own.

By simply selecting these few issues concerning WTC7, Roberts conviently ignores several other characteristics of the building’s collapse that point to demolition, including:

• The collapse started from the bottom.
• The onset of the collapse was sudden.
• The collapse was total.
• The building fell in a near-symmetrical fashion.
• Its acceleration approximated that of a free-falling object.
• The debris from the building ended up in a fairly small pile almost entirely within its footprint.

These are all standard features of a demolition that Roberts makes no mention of.

• 22:48 FDNY Chief Daniel Nigro on conspiracist claims

This next part of Roberts’ video is simply a statement from Chief Daniel Nigro concerning his thoughts on conspiracy theories. This merely a person’s opinion, and addresses none of the scientific evidence which points to demolition.

• 23:00 Collapse of WTC 7 expected by all. On-scene account by FDNY firefighter Miller of Ladder 15, says building leaning, no way to fight fires, pull back from WTC 7

At this point, Roberts chooses to address the issue of the foreknowledge of WTC7’s collapse. He asserts that because the firefighters expected the building to collapse, the collapse was not unusual. However, Professor Graeme MacQueen has demonstrated that the foreknowledge of the buildings collapse is extremely suspicious. Also, any structural damage Building 7 might have sustained is irrelevant, as NIST claims that the fires alone brought the building down and that it would have collapsed even with no damage.

• 25:08 Brent Blanchard of Protec, who spoke with demolitions experts on the scene and documented the clean-up process, on conspiracist claims

Roberts then features a statement by Protec employee Brent Blanchard. Several of Blanchard’s claims about the collapse of the WTC have long been refuted by Jim Hoffman.

• 25:45 WTC 7 structural engineer Irwin Cantor on conspiracist claims

At this point of Roberts’ video, he shows a statement from Irwin Cantor, WTC7’s structural engineer. It’s important to note that Cantor makes no mention of “conspiracist claims.” Others have studied NIST’s claims about what caused the collapse and have found numerous problems.

• 26:00 New WTC 7: safety and structural features

Roberts then shows us a video about how the new WTC7 is being constructed. Regardless of whatever upgrades were given to the new WTC7, no building like the original WTC7 has ever collapsed from fire.

• 27:47 "Architect for 9/11 truth" Richard Gage gives presentation including audio deception

The video proceeds to criticize Richard Gage for using a video of a demolition with no audio. Again, we have already covered that the sound issue is explainable. If this is greatest flaw Roberts can find in Gage’s presentation, then he’s a long way away from debunking anyone.

• 28:36 AE911Truth and STJ911truth member and mechanical engineer Tony Szamboti claims Silverstein said WTC 7 was brought down for safety reasons, and claims the towers showed upward explosions.

Roberts then goes on to criticize Tony Szamboti for his claims about Larry Silverstein and the ejections of debris from the Towers. While there does appear to be no upward ejections from the Towers, there are outward and even downward ejections that are clearly smoking guns. As for Silverstein, I have never seen the program Szamboti is referring to, but we now have conformation that Silverstein did discuss demolishing Building 7 on 9/11. Roberts addresses none of Szamboti’s scholarly technical essays on the collapse of the Towers, and decides to simply attack some of his lesser claims.

• 29:49 Leading conspiracists claim pyroclastic flows resulted from use of mysterious explosives.

Roberts next criticizes members of the Truth Movement for claiming the huge dust clouds from the collapse of the Towers were “pyroclastic flows.” Again, here is an instance where I agree with one of Roberts’ claims. The dust clouds were clearly not pyroclastic flows, but they were extremely reminiscent of the types of dust clouds produced by controlled demolitions. As David Ray Griffin points out in his book Debunking 9/11 Debunking:

This is a common feature of collapses produced by explosives, as can be seen in videos of controlled demolitions of structures such as Seattle’s Kingdome and the Reading Grain Facility, which are available on the Web. The dust clouds produced at the Twin Towers differ only by being much bigger, which is what could have been predicted, given the fact that these buildings were much larger, so they would have required more powerful, and a greater number of, explosives. –Debunking 9/11 Debunking, pg. 188

Also, several members of the movement have only referred to the clouds as “pyroclastic-like,” including Richard Gage on his updated AE9/11Truth website.

• 32:49 Was all or most of the WTC tower concrete turned to a fine powder?

Roberts goes on to address one of the more controversial issues about the collapse of the WTC: the pulverization of the concrete. Admittedly, the pulverization of the concrete has been exaggerated by members of the movement. However, although the concrete was not completely pulverized, the concrete at Ground Zero appears to be very similar to concrete after a controlled demolition.



• 34:55 Conspiracists claim tons of explosives – or a sci-fi mystery weapon was used. Video of 100-ton TNT blast

Roberts then takes issue with the fact that the types of explosives Dr. Jones and others have suggested were used would not have pulverized the concrete anyway. However, this is not necessarily true. Given the moisture content of concrete, elevating it to a sufficient temperature would cause explosive spalling. If large quantities of aluminothermics such as thermate and nanothermite were used to sever structural members, the excess heat could have caused such spalling.

• 36:02 Steven Jones, David Ray Griffin, and Richard Gage can't make up their minds: explosives, thermate, or super-secret mystery weapons?

Roberts next proceeds to criticize members of the movement for claiming different types of explosives were used in the demolition of the Towers. As Roberts puts it they “can’t make up their minds.” However, Richard Gage has responded to these weak criticisms.

• 37:51 Tons of TNT equivalent were stored in the towers – gravitational potential energy

Roberts’ video then goes into the fact that there was already an enormous amount of energy in the buildings to begin with: gravitational potential energy. He claims that because the Towers fell at less than the rate of free fall, the buildings actually absorbed a huge amount of energy. However, this is the case in any controlled demolition. Buildings brought down with explosives rarely, if ever, fall at the rate of free fall and their collapses clearly absorb a large amount of energy. But according to the official reports, no explosives were used to demolish the Towers, so how did they collapse in time intervals consistent with controlled demolitions?

• 38:27 Mysteriously-expanding dust clouds? Alex Jones accuses, Jim Hoffman investigates.

The next part of Roberts’ video deals mainly with Jim Hoffman’s calculations about the expansion of the North Tower’s dust clouds. He claims that Hoffman did not take air pressure into account in his analysis. While Hoffman has acknowledged that his calculations are not perfect, he did in fact take air into account in his analysis.

Given that the Twin Towers' dust clouds behaved like pyroclastic flows, with distinct boundaries and rapidly expanding frontiers (averaging perhaps 35 feet/second on the ground for the first 30 seconds), it is doubtful that mixing with ambient air accounted for a significant fraction of their volume.

Note that Hoffman claims the clouds only behaved like pyroclastic flows, not that they actually were pyroclastic flows.

The idea that the falling debris could have caused the expansion of the clouds seems unlikely, as videos show that most of the debris hit the ground before the dust reached the ground.

• 41:05 So what caused THESE dust clouds?

Roberts next claims that the expansion of the clouds were not unusual because they happen in other controlled demolitions. Really. As we have already seen, this characteristic appears to be very consistent with explosive demolition.

• 43:05 Conspiracist papers published in engineering journals

This small section of Roberts’ video simply makes fun of the Truth Movement for not having any papers published in any science journals. However, the Truth Movement now currently has six papers published in peer-reviewed journals, with three of them being published in the Journal of Engineering Mechanics.

• 43:26 The conspiracists' best and brightest run from. a tour guide

At this point, Roberts simply makes fun of the fact that members of the movement have not debated him. First of all, Richard Gage has debated Roberts. But perhaps the reason that many in the movement aren’t debating with Mr. Roberts is because they’ve been busy debating with actual scientists.

• 44:34 AE911truth & STJ911truth website statistics graphed

Here Roberts ridicules AE9/11Truth and STJ9/11Truth for their low statistics online. This clearly is in no way representative of how many people question the official story of 9/11. Polls show a broad skepticism among Americans of the official story of 9/11.

• 44:55 Structural engineer and WTC investigator Gene Corley on conspiracist methods – or lack thereof.

Roberts then shows a video of Gene Corley claiming that the Truth Movement has no “engineering basis for its conclusions. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are currently over 1400 architects and engineers from around the world who agree we need a new investigation into the collapse of the three WTC skyscrapers.

• 45:40 Suggestions for study: Bazant, Greening, Mackey, Rogers

The last part of Roberts’ video simply suggests that people read the works of debunkers such as Dr. Bazant, Ryan Mackey, and Dr. Frank Greening, all of whom have been responded to.

Conclusions:

As I said at the beginning, Roberts’ video provides nothing more than half-baked arguments and petty insults. His video does nothing to answer the question of why those buildings really collapsed. Ultimately, I would say Roberts wasted his time putting this video back online, and that this misguided tour guide should really try to rethink his position.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Building What? is up...

And according to Joseph Nobles, there's a lie on every page. I have just recently looked through the website myself, and while I admittedly have some differences with it, Mr. Nobles seems to think that almost everything on the site is either false or misleading. Mr. Nobles' responses to the evidence pages at Building What? are, as we will see, very misleading and false.

Free Fall Collapse

Mr. Nobles claims that NIST actually explained what caused the period of free fall in Building 7's collapse.



It has been demonstrated several times why this explanation is complete nonsense. NIST merely implies that the alleged buckling of the floors caused the free fall, without offering any sort of analysis into exactly how the buckling caused it in the first place. Basically, we are being told that "NIST said 8 floors buckled, and it fell in free fall for 8 stories, so the buckling must have caused the free fall." That is a lot like saying "2 is a number. 1 is a number. Therefore, 2=1."

Dr. Shyam Sunder himself admitted that free fall means an object has "no structural components below it." And yet now NIST is telling us that buckled columns led to free fall. Buckled supports is a long way from "no supports."

NIST Collapse Model

According to Mr. Nobles, NIST's computer models accurately simulate the collapse of the building.



If Mr. Nobles had bothered to pay attention to the video posted on that page, he would have seen that both models--the one with and without structural damage--are very different from the actual collapse.



Even assuming that the "curtain wall" would have added some stiffness, the models still show the building collapsing in a different manner in terms of direction and rate. Neither of NIST's simulations even show the entire collapse, so how can it be possibly determined if they are accurate or not?



Again, this matter could be easily resolved if NIST were to release their modeling data for review.

Sulfidated Steel

This topic is especially interesting, as I recently addressed this issue raised by Mr. Nobles in great detail. He offers his own sentiments about how sulfur evaporates at 445°C.



Given the fact that it has been determined that the steel was attacked by a liquid slag containing iron, oxygen, and sulfur, it would seem to indicate that the sulfur was chemically mixed into whatever sulidified the steel, rather than just evaporating in the air. Mr. Nobles once again avoids the issue of there being no plausible natural explanation for the sulfur in the building, as evidenced by his omission of the next part of this page, which reads:

"The fact that sulfur evaporates at a low temperature, 445° C, along with the very low levels of elemental sulfur in office buildings appears to preclude the possibility that the eutectic could have formed as a result of a slow sulfidation process in the debris pile.”

Explosive Residues

This section is quite remarkable, as Mr. Nobles offers a now very old explanation for the red/gray chips.



This has been refuted SEVERAL times.





I would be very interested if someone could find me a can of exploding primer paint. I asked my local Home Depot if they had any, but they said they didn't. Guess they must have been out of stock.

Regardless, Mr. Nobles features this comparison picture as evidence.



I came up with a good analogy for this.



Notice that his picture shows paint from the WTC was heated to over 650°C. The chips Dr. Jones found ignite at around 430°C.

Eyewitnesses

According to Mr. Nobles, even if there were witnesses to explosions, it doesn't matter because there are apparently no explosions in any of the collapse videos.



First of all, the actual "sounds of explosions" are not necessary to warrant an investigation into if they were used.



But the fact is, sound evidence for explosions has been found.





Foreknowledge

Mr. Nobles then criticizes the page on the foreknowledge of Building 7's collapse.



As Graeme MacQueen points out in the abstract of his essay, Waiting for Seven:

"The majority of FDNY members did not rationally conclude, on the basis of direct perception of damage to the building, that it was in danger of collapse; they accepted that it would collapse on the basis of what they were told."

And this assertion is backed up by not only the information in his essay, but other sources as well.

Destruction of Evidence

Mr. Nobles lastly claims that there was nothing suspicious about the rapid clean-up of the WTC debris.



I'm sorry if the removal of the debris doesn't bother you Mr. Nobles, but it bothered others, including people who don't think the buildings were demolished.

Minute 7:18


Mr. Nobles closes with saying that the videos of Building 7's collapse featured on Building What? don't feature the penthouse collapse or audio. Well, the collapse of column 79 and the penthouse is problematic enough itself, and here's a video that does feature audio of the collapse, and it doesn't exactly sound quiet.



Related Info:

NFL's Mark Stepnoski & Tony Szamboti: Buildingwhat? Round 2

Thank You Mr Curley: "Debunker" PROMOTES the "Building What?" Campaign & Pushes Discredited Material (again) to Discredit Himself

Breaking News: Hell Freezes Over!

Geraldo Should Be Impressed by 1300 Architects and Engineers

Shirley they can't be serious!

Attacks against Geraldo and Napolitano expose establishment desperation and demolish left-right nonsense

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Hello Joseph Nobles

Mr. Nobles just recently addressed my latest post about his website. Yet again, he doesn't seem to think I'm addressing all that I should.



As we will see, Mr. Nobles has a talent for addressing one point out of a huge argument and acting as if it is the central point to the whole argument. Thus, he holds great promise in the debunking community.

He apparently thinks I don't have good reasons to distrust NIST.



Well, given the fact that I very clearly demonstrated that NIST falsified the data in their report about the lack of shear studs in WTC 7 (a point which, by the way, was supposed to be a reason that other steel skyscrapers had not collapsed from fire) and that NIST failed to factor in any thermal conductivity in their models, I'd say I have very good reason to distrust NIST. Given the fact that NIST obviously didn't factor in these parameters in their models, I'm not surprised that the NIST models found a "design flaw" in Building 7. I guess it also doesn't bother Mr. Nobles that NIST's report states that column 79 failed and accelerated at an extremely fast rate in 1/5 of a second, a virtual impossibility.

Mr. Nobles acts as if I don't address NIST's report as much as I obviously did. But perhaps that is why he didn't even provide a link to my original post.



I am well aware of the ARUP study. But, as you made clear in your original post Mr. Nobles, it is not impossible for steel buildings to collapse from fire, whatever their construction. But in any case, we are just talking about one building out of several buildings that all had more severe fires than the Twin Towers and Building 7.

Mr. Nobles, you constantly claim I ignore important points. And yet you don't address the points I do bring up in great detail. If you want to just take NIST at their word, then fine. But please try to point out anything that I get wrong, or else this will get quite repetitive. In other words, (as others on this blog have said) put up or shut up.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Debunking Joseph Nobles: Freefall Speed

This is a response to the AE911Truth.Info page titled "Freefall Speed." Here, I will examine the arguments made by Joseph Nobles and see if they are justifiable.

The Difference Between "Speed" and "Acceleration"

The first point Mr. Nobles makes is one I happen to agree with. It is clearly more appropriate to say "acceleration" rather than "speed" when discussing the issue of free fall. However, I have often felt that trying to determine if the WTC fell at free fall acceleration is in itself somewhat misleading. If we are trying to establish whether or not the buildings were controlled demolitions, then the question really should not be "did the buildings fall at free fall?" The question should be "did the buildings fall in time intervals consistent with controlled demolitions?" That of course begs the question of whether or not buildings destroyed through controlled demolition fall in free fall. More on this will be discussed below.

Rate of Collapses

Mr. Nobles features this photo to demonstrate how the debris coming off from the Towers is falling faster than the Towers themselves.

While the debris is certainly falling faster than the actual collapse, the wave of the destruction appears to be keeping up with the majority of the debris. David Chandler has outlined this characteristic of the collapses very accurately.




What's more, the rate of fall for some of the pieces of steel has itself been shown to be a smoking gun.

It has already been established that the total time for the Towers to come down was approximately 15 seconds in either case.

Mr. Nobles then presents this video to demonstrate that Building 7 actually took close to 16 seconds to collapse.



This is an issue that has been addressed several times already, but many debunkers still think the fall of the east penthouse invalidates the idea that WTC 7 was a demolition. I myself have already shown the collapse of column 79 and the penthouse is problematic enough. And it is not impossible that roof elements can collapse in a demolition before the main structure.



Sure, there was a much shorter gap between the two events than with Building 7. But clearly the idea of sections of the roof falling in a demolition before the main structure is not unheard of.



Oddly, Mr. Nobles refers to the main structure of WTC 7 as a "portion" of the collapse. That makes it sound like it was a very small part of the building that collapsed. The east penthouse could be more accurately described as a "portion."

Measurements of the Fall Rates

Mr. Nobles attempts to demonstrate that the rate at which the buildings fell has already been well accounted for by several sources.
He first cites a statement made in NIST's FAQ on the WTC, ignoring the fact that nowhere in NIST's report do they explain the actual total collapse of the buildings.
As 911research.wtc7.net points out:

NIST's assertion that the Tower's intact structure was "unable to stop or even to slow the falling mass" is absurd:

-It requires us to believe that the massive steel frames of the towers provided no more resistance to falling rubble than air.
-It ignores the fact that most of the rubble fell outside the towers' footprints, and hence could not contribute to crushing.
-It is unsupported by any calculation or logical argument.


Mr. Nobles then cites the work of Bazant et al. He refers to Bazant's work as providing "more rigorous calculations" and that his papers have been published in "respected scientific journals." However, several refutations to Bazant's work have been written over the years. Two refutations have even been peer reviewed and published in the same journal Bazant's papers have been published in. Those can be viewed here and here.

Although Mr. Nobles portrays NIST and Bazant as having explained that "the acceleration of their descent was not mathematically unusual," there are phenomenons in the collapses of both buildings that neither NIST nor Bazant account for.
One of which is the instant acceleration of the upper section of WTC 1. Debunkers have yet to provide any rational explanation for this event.
Another phenomenon is the disintegration of the upper section of WTC 2 as it collapsed. 911research points out that:

"It is clear that that the top section itself must be disintegrating. Otherwise the top section would have extended far into parts of the building that are clearly as yet unaffected by the collapse."

And video evidence confirms this.

Mr. Nobles makes some mention of the fact that portions of the cores of both Towers remained standing after the collapses. However, video evidence shows that the remaining core of the South Tower included neither north nor west columns.



And there was hardly anything left of the North Tower's core.



Despite Mr. Nobles' claims to the contrary, the rate at which the Towers fell is greatly at issue.

The Fall of WTC 7

Mr. Nobles lastly attempts to refute many arguments made about the collapse of WTC 7. Mr. Nobles believes that the main structure of WTC 7 also did not fall in 6.5 seconds. He features this diagram to illustrate this point.

I've never particularly liked using pictures to track the fall of any of the buildings. I feel that the videos speak for themselves.




Mr. Nobles makes quite a remarkable statement in regard to the collapse of the building.

"As shocking as it may be to our inexperience in large buildings falling, this is how quickly buildings of this size fall when they begin to collapse."

Oh really? If that's the case Mr. Nobles, then why did these buildings, all known controlled demolitions, take as long and even longer to fall than Building 7? Considering the fact that all these buildings are shorter than Building 7 and supposedly fire, not explosives, brought Building 7 down.



Controlled demolition clearly doesn't always cause a building to fall at free fall.

Finally, Mr. Nobles attempts to explain the period of free fall Building 7 underwent in its collapse. And like all other debunkers, he attributes this to the alleged buckling of eight of the lower floors. I recently demonstrated in two previous posts that these claims are clearly unfounded.

Conclusions

Mr. Nobles has clearly not explained the collapse anomalies of the Twin Towers and Building 7. Nothing will ever accurately explain what happened to those buildings until a new investigation is finally launched. One thing is for sure though: fire cannot cause a steel framed building to fall at the incredible rate at which the WTC fell in. The only example of a top-down progressive collapse initiated by fire is one in which a 13 story building took 10 seconds to partially collapse.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Debunking the Debunkers' Free Fall Fallacies

One central argument debunkers have raised over the years is that the WTC buildings could not have been brought down with explosives because that would have caused the buildings fall in free fall.

However, a video made by debunker AlienEntity actually disproved the notion that free fall is a neccessary characteristic of a controlled demolition.



My thoughts on this video:

Obviously he is trying to use the fall of the east penthouse to make his main point. But, having already been established, including the fall of the penthouse is not an objective way of timing the collapse. As I myself have already pointed out, there are enough problems with the collapse of column 79 and the east penthouse alone.

His flawed argument about the penthouse aside, there are several significant points his video makes. First off, it shows that explosives can actually cause a building to fall at 50% the rate of free fall. This is important because, given the fact that the Twin Towers collapsed in about 15 seconds and their free fall time would be about 9 or 10 seconds, it shows that the Towers evidently did fall in time intervals that would be consistent with a demolition. However, this is a huge problem, considering that:

-The collapses started at the top and not at the bottom of the buildings.

-Supposedly no explosives were used to bring the buildings down, according to the official story.

In any case, let us now look at WTC 7. His video uses the Landmark Tower demolition as a comparison to Building 7. Oddly enough, a comparison of the Landmark demolition to WTC 7 was made long ago by the truth movement. By comparing the main structure of WTC 7 to the Landmark Tower, we see that both buildings fell in approximately the same amount of time. Building 7 was 576 feet tall and the Landmark Tower was only 380 feet tall. How could Building 7, being almost 200 feet taller, fall in the same amount of time as the Landmark building? His video also mentions the period of free fall Building 7 underwent, but merely hand waves it away by saying there's "a lot of misunderstanding about what that actually means." There certainly is a lot of misunderstanding about it, but it's not truthers who have the misunderstanding. The main argument debunkers have against the 2.25 second period of free fall is the supposed buckling of 8 of the lower floors in the building.

I touched on this subject quite extensively in my previous post, but I will expand on it by breaking down the main problems with this argument.

1. We have no visual evidence of this buckling occuring, so the claim is only based on NIST's word.

2. All of NIST's models show the buckling occuring only on the west side of the building.


However, the free fall occurs over the entire width of the building. We know this because the roofline remains essentially straight through period of free fall.

Other than the slight kink, the roofline remains essentially straight for the first 4-5 seconds of its collapse.

3. Even if the buckling did occur, there is no evidence supporting that it would even cause the building to free fall in the first place. We would only be looking at warped and twisted steel, but not zero steel.




4. NIST's own simulations show that this buckling would cause the building to fall in a different manner than what was observed in the videos.


Ultimately, it has been established that free fall is not a neccessary feature in a controlled demolition. But debunkers would have you believe that NIST's "progressive collapse" theory could cause a phenomenon in a building collapse that even controlled demolitions can't always cause. Until debunkers give a truly rational explanation for the free fall of WTC 7, I will continue to see it as a physical impossibility in a natural collapse. And the ironic thing is, NIST agrees that it is physically impossible.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

The Physics of WTC 7





About a month ago I had a debate with several debunkers at once about the collapse of WTC 7. In particular, we debated about the period of free fall that occured during the collapse. Here are some of the more memorable responses I got from them:

"I'm still gonna say wiping out 30 meters of supports is too fucking obvious for a secret op." -Weirdo10o4
(Apparently it wasn't that obvious, as NIST needed a high school teacher to point it out to them.)

"consider that I can roll a bowling ball down a long flight of stairs. As it rolls down the stairs, it spends time in free fall--between each stair" -EdgemanLL2
(The very obvious difference of course is that when a ball rolls down the stairs, nothing is removed and the ball only free falls for a few inches. Building 7 was in free fall for about 100 feet, or 1/6 of its height.)

"It wouldn't need to give up any of its energy to buckle or crush anything." -CaptMandrake360
(I almost didn't even know how to respond to that.)

The main person I was really debating with was the infamous RKOwens4, who apparently thinks that NIST actually predicted the period of free fall.

"The only point I'm trying to make is that NIST DID predict it and DOES have an explanation for the 2.25 seconds of free-fall. So don't go around saying, 'The 2.25 second free-fall came as a total surprise to NIST' or 'NIST can't explain why the building fell at free-fall for 2.25 seconds.'
As I said, the NIST report on WTC7 actually PREDICTED a 2.25 second free-fall of WTC7, due to the buckling of 8 floors near the base of the building."
-RKOwens4

I wasn't entirely sure how Mr. Owens came to this conclusion, as there was nothing about the building entering into free fall in NIST's draft report and, as mentioned above, David Chandler was the one who had to point it out to them. But perhaps he believes NIST's calculations did predict the free fall and NIST was just simply unaware of it. This seems unlikely though, when one looks at the differences between the Draft Report and the Final Report:

The Draft Report stated:
"The collapse time of the upper 18 floors of the north face of WTC 7... was 40 percent greater than the computed free fall time. This is consistent with physical principals." -NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Draft for Public Comment, 610

However, the Final Report states:
"The observed descent time of the upper 18 stories of the north face of WTC 7... was 40 percent greater than the computed free fall time. A more detailed analysis of the descent of the north face found three stages: (1) a slow descent with acceleration less than that of gravity that corrosponded to the buckling of the exterior columns at the lower floors, (2) a freefall descent over approximately eight stories at gravitational acceleration for approximately 2.25 seconds, and (3) a decreasing acceleration as the north face encountered resistance from the structure below." -NIST NCSTAR 1-9 (Final Report): 607

Note that the phrase "consistent with physical principals" is completely absent from NIST's newer passage. In fact, "consistent with physical principals" appears nowhere in NIST's final report. There is a "consistent with" statement in the final report, but it says nothing about physical principals. After giving its three stage analysis, NIST states: "The three stages of collapse progression described above are consistent with the results of the global collapse analyses discussed earlier in this chapter." -NCSTAR 1-9 (Final Report): 603
Basically, what NIST is saying is that its three stage analysis on this page is consistent with its three stage analyses on earlier pages! How nice of NIST to assure everyone that a later part of their report agrees with an earlier part of their report. It's apparently not consistent with physical principals, but it's consistent with their report! In any case, these facts show that there was absolutely no indication prior to publishing their final report that they had predicted free fall at all. It was one thing they said was impossible. However, this too was a detail Mr. Owens disagreed with:

"Can you provide me with a link to where they ever said that any period of free-fall would have been impossible from a fire-induced collapse?" -RKOwens4

I do wonder if Mr. Owens has actually watched NIST's technical briefing.



I also briefly discussed how the fires could not have been hot enough to cause the collapse in the first place. Mr. Owens was (not surprisingly) unconvinced.

"Now, go read the report and explain to me WHY expanding floor beams pushing the core columns out of alignment was not enough to cause the building to collapse. Tell me why, specifically." -RKOwens4

Specifically, because the fires could not possibly have been as hot as NIST stated to do that.

"raising those five floor beams to a temperature of 600°C would require an enormous amount of energy, far more than was available from the burning of the office furnishings underneath the floor beams." -Kevin Ryan

Debunkers can easily hand wave away Kevin Ryan's statement, as he is a "truther" and therefore has no credibility. But unfortunately for them, even Dr. Frank Greening, a long time debunker, agrees that the fires could not have been as hot as NIST says.

"NIST's collapse initiation hypothesis requires that structural steel temperatures on floors 12/13 significantly exceeded 300°C [570°F]--a condition that could never have been realized with NIST's postulated 32 kg/m2 fuel loading." -Dr. Frank Greening

While Dr. Greening does not believe the building was demolished, he does agree that NIST's report is false.

The above three videos are basically my response to these debunkers who feel there was nothing strange about the free fall of WTC 7.

Far from solving the mystery of WTC 7's collapse, NIST has done nothing but created more mysteries. And debunkers have certainly not solved them.