New Victim Added to 9/11 Death Toll, and Sadly, More to Follow

[KrazyHorse]

[MightyTiny]

That's just what the conspiracy theorists do - they look for anything even slightly out of the ordinary, and then draw the most elaborate, unlikely and fantastical conclusions out of them. Completely ignoring the countless difficulties and the sheer practical impossibility of maintaining such an elaborate conspiracy.

It's as useless to debate a conspiracy theorist as it is to debate a religious fundamentalist - both already know the "truth" with absolute certainty, and neither are willing to critically look at the implausibilities in their views.

Let's just briefly look at one of the links you provided, and it's claims:

....The results of the examination are striking. They reveal a phenomenon never before observed in building fires: eutectic reactions, which caused "intergranular melting capable of turning a solid steel girder into Swiss cheese." The New York Times described this as "perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation."

http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evi...urgy/index.html

The article referenced a few sources: The WTC Building Performance Study, and these two sources:

http://www.wpi.edu/News/Transformations/2002Spring/steel.html

and

http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Biederman/Biederman-0112.html

Now I read through the sources from which the article draws it's conclusions, and boy....

There's NOTHING in those articles to support a conspiracy. The conspiracy site plays on uncertainties, like this from the WTC Building Performance Study:

The severe corrosion and subsequent erosion of Samples 1 and 2 are a very unusual event. No clear explanation for the source of the sulfur has been identified. The rate of corrosion is also unknown...

Neglecting to tell that it's not as if this is a great mystery without identified POSSIBLE solutions:

...It is possible that this is the result of long-term heating in the ground following the collapse of the buildings. It is also possible that the phenomenon started prior to collapse and accelerated the weakening of the steel structure. A detailed study into the mechanisms of this phenomenon is needed to determine what risk, if any, is presented to existing steel structures exposed to severe and long-burning fires.

No source seems to verify the claim that this is a phenomenon "never before observed in building fires". That may or may not be true, but we can't know, because not only is no expert source given for this claim, no source at all seems to make it.

The JOM article, simply describes the state of the steel, without drawing much in the way of conclusions.

The most interesting presented as "supporting" evidence was this:

http://www.wpi.edu/News/Transformations/2002Spring/steel.html

The conspiracy theorists again focus on things like this in the report:

A one-inch column has been reduced to half-inch thickness. Its edges--which are curled like a paper scroll--have been thinned to almost razor sharpness. Gaping holes--some larger than a silver dollar--let light shine through a formerly solid steel flange. This Swiss cheese appearance shocked all of the fire-wise professors, who expected to see distortion and bending--but not holes.

But ignore the offered solutions to this:

In the World Trade Center fire, the presence of oxygen, sulfur and heat caused iron oxide and iron sulfide to form at the surface of structural steel members. This liquid slag corroded through intergranular channels into the body of the metal, causing severe erosion and a loss of structural integrity.

"The important questions," says Biederman, "are how much sulfur do you need, and where did it come from? The answer could be as simple--and this is scary- as acid rain."

Have environmental pollutants increased the potential for eutectic reactions? "We may have just the inherent conditions in the atmosphere so that a lot of water on a burning building will form sulfuric acid, hydrogen sulfide or hydroxides, and start the eutectic process as the steel heats up," Biederman says. He notes that the sulfur could also have come from contents of the burning buildings, such as rubber or plastics. Another possible culprit is ocean salts, such as sodium sulfate, which is known to catalyze sulfidation reactions on turbine blades of jet engines. "All of these things have to be explored," he says.

From a building-safety point of view, the critical question is: Did the eutectic mixture form before the buildings collapsed, or later, as the remains smoldered on the ground. "We have no idea," admits Sisson. "To answer that, we would need to recreate those fires in the FPE labs, and burn fresh steel of known composition for the right time period, with the right environment." He hopes to have the opportunity to collaborate on thermodynamically controlled studies, and to observe the effects of adding sulfur, copper and other elements. The most important lesson, Sisson and Biederman stress, is that fail-safe sprinkler systems are essential to prevent steel from reaching even 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, because phase changes at the 1,300-degree mark compromise a structure's load-bearing capacity.

Now wouldn't it be remarkable that in a fire of this scale, with unusual factors like jets hitting sky scrapers, and fires llasting as long as they did, there wouldn't be any deviation from what experts have learned to expect from much smaller scale fires without these complicating factors? OF COURCE there are going to be new, unexpected discoveries under such circumstances.

But the conspiracy theorists take this rather unimpressive "mystery" as proof of the most unlikely, needlessly complicated sequence of events, to support their preconceived views.

This sort of selective reporting and drawing the most unlikely conclusions and ignoring all the reasonable, simpler options, is typical of the conspiracy theorist.

They either cite sources that aren't up to scrutiny, publications without expertice in relevant fields, OR, when they do cite actual peer reviewed sources, they distort what they say, focus on the uncertainties choosing not to report the potential solutions, and essentially give entirely false impressions out of them.

They can do this - just like the creationist can quote evolutionists out of context - because they can be fairly confident that no conspiracy theorist will actually check the sources, AND that very few critics of the conspiracy theory will bother to go to the trouble of actually reading the sources, time after time, when they know from experience what the result of that investigation would be.

Further, notice that this is a basic strategy of conspiracy theorists (and creationists, and all manner of pseudoscientists) in live debates:

They make claims such as have been made here, and leave the sceptic without an answer. Not because there wouldn't be an answer, or because their claim had some validity, but simply because the sceptic doesn't have the sources to check those claims in a live debate. And nobody can be expected to know every report and every study by heart, in expectation of fraudulent claims that those studies support something they actually don't.

That's the difference between the sceptic and the conspiracy theorist: when a sceptic sites a source, you can be pretty sure that that source does actually say what the sceptic reports it as saying; and that the POINT made in the source isn't lost or distorted in the reporting.

Further, if a sceptic does make a mistake, they'll correct it themselves, and publically appologize... whereas the conspiracy theorist just forgets about it and moves on to the next silly, endlessly refuted claim.

Now how about, before lauching another truckload of arguments, you actually went through the sources mentioned by the people making those arguments, just to make sure that what they present as supporting evidence actually supports what they say?

[MrFun]

. . . . . .



You're too much, Slaughter.

[Slaughtermeyer]

Originally posted by MightyTiny
Further, if a sceptic does make a mistake, they'll correct it themselves, and publically appologize... whereas the conspiracy theorist just forgets about it and moves on to the next silly, endlessly refuted claim.

Dr. Griffin has admitted to being wrong about the presence of airphones on flight 77. And the makers of Loose Change have come out with two revisions of their original documentary, and are currently working on a third.

Do you seriously expect the NIST to correct the errors that it made in its report?

http://www.911blogger.com/node/7793

...It is possible that this is the result of long-term heating in the ground following the collapse of the buildings.

So in other words, we're supposed to believe that even though the steel couldn't have melted while the WTC was standing and on fire, it somehow could have become hot enough to melt after reaching the ground. Can you come up with even one plausible explanation as to how this "heating in the ground" could have taken place?

[DinoDoc]

MightyTiny, I figured that you would find this quote interesting: "I would be the first to admit that our film definitely contained errors, it still does contain some dubious claims, and it does come to some conclusions that are not 100% backed up by the facts.” - Dylan Avery Loose Change director source

[MightyTiny]

Originally posted by Slaughtermeyer
Dr. Griffin has admitted to being wrong about the presence of airphones on flight 77. And the makers of Loose Change have come out with two revisions of their original documentary, and are currently working on a third.

...Just like even creationists abandon arguments when enough people see through them - when it gets too embarasing to repeat something that is trivially shown false. The point is that an argument is abandoned only when it's outlved it's usefulness and become a liability - and the obvious question doesn't get asked: How on Earth did such inane arguments get through in the first place? Could it be that there's a lack of honest research and fact checking by those making these arguments?

But that's no trouble to the conspiracy theorist - there's always new arguments you can make, provided that you don't improve your methods or the requirements you make of the arguments you are going to use.

Once one batch of arguments gets refuted too thoroughly to be of use any more, just make up another patch, just as flawed, just as silly, and repeat them untill again, they become a liability. Rinse and repeat.

The difference in this to the sceptic is that a sceptic doesn't wait for his arguments to be exposed as false by someone else, but you can be sure that if a sceptic makes a bad argument, the refutation will come from WHITHIN the sceptical community, and the bad argument will be abandoned as soon as it is shown bad.

Do you seriously expect the NIST to correct the errors that it made in its report?

http://www.911blogger.com/node/7793

Not going to read a 30+ page petition, sorry. Every single time I've gone to trouble to check sources referenced by conspiracy theorists, all I've found is rotten apples - distortion, selective reporting, and outright fabrications. I have no idea whether NIST has anything to correct, or whether it would if it had - certainly the source from which this petition comes from doesn't inspire much credibility. It's like the boy who cried wolf - I've returned the call enough times to know that it's useless to bother.

So in other words, we're supposed to believe that even though the steel couldn't have melted while the WTC was standing and on fire, it somehow could have become hot enough to melt after reaching the ground. Can you come up with even one plausible explanation as to how this "heating in the ground" could have taken place?

No, certainly not. If you got that out of the quotes from those articles, then you didn't understand the content at all. The corrosive elements lowered the temperature at which the load bearing ability of the steel was compromised, and this corrosion, coupled with the heat, resulted in the pattern that your source touts some sort of evidence for a conspiracy. The article mentions several sources for chemicals which could result in such patterns in the steel as was evidenced - from acid rain to salt in sea air to flammable office materials. Your source failed to report any of these reasonable, simple explanations of the observation, but instead insinuated that this is proof of some conspiracy so far fetched that it's beyond silly.

This is selective reporting: reporting only the observations that caught experts by surpirce, while failing to report the proposals of those experts as for solutions to those problems.

With these sorts of tactics, there isn't a "theory" bizarre enough that it couldn't be argued for in a manner that sounds superficially convincing to people who don't bother to check the claims, and are eager to see truth in the wild claims.

[Slaughtermeyer]

Originally posted by MightyTiny
The corrosive elements lowered the temperature at which the load bearing ability of the steel was compromised, and this corrosion, coupled with the heat, resulted in the pattern that your source touts some sort of evidence for a conspiracy. The article mentions several sources for chemicals which could result in such patterns in the steel as was evidenced - from acid rain to salt in sea air to flammable office materials. Your source failed to report any of these reasonable, simple explanations of the observation, but instead insinuated that this is proof of some conspiracy so far fetched that it's beyond silly.

This does not in any way explain the melting that was observed.

The exact words the FEMA report used were "Evidence of a severe high temperature corrosion attack on the steel, including oxidation and sulfidation with subsequent intergranular melting, was readily visible in the near-surface microstructure."

Sure, it may be theoretically possible that things like acid rain and salt in the sea air may have caused the corrosion and explain the presence of the chemicals, (at least until the experiments that would prove or disprove this theory get carried out, if they ever do get carried out) but it still does not explain the melting that was observed.
And yes, the chemicals lowered the melting point of the steel to ~1000 C but even debunkers like Eager & Musso are forced to admit that "it is highly unlikely that the steel at the WTC experienced temperatures above the 750–800°C range."

http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Eagar/Eagar-0112.html

[Arrian]

It's as useless to debate a conspiracy theorist as it is to debate a religious fundamentalist

QFT.

No matter how badly he's beaten, he's never going to give up. At this point, it's best to just take your own advice there, Mighty Tiny.

-Arrian

[MightyTiny]

Originally posted by Slaughtermeyer

....And yes, the chemicals lowered the melting point of the steel to ~1000 C but even debunkers like Eager & Musso are forced to admit that "it is highly unlikely that the steel at the WTC experienced temperatures above the 750–800°C range."
http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM...agar-0112.html

Yes, that temperature range may be right for the actual september 11th event, but the fires burned in the rubble for a long time afterwards, and because of steel burning under the conditions in the rubble, temperatures can reach much higher. The conspiracy theorist assumes, arbitrarily, without basis, that the melting occurred during the impact (or explosion) event.

If you're interested, see http://www.debunking911.com/ironburns.htm

And with that, I'm going to do as Arrian suggest, take my own advice, and discontinue this pointless exchange. I've spent enough time debating conspiracy theorists to know that no conceivable evidence could convince them that their conspiracy might be bunk. There's no way to falsify a conspiracy theory - if a conspiracy theory is simply false, a conspiracy theorist has no reasonable way of finding this out, because no conceivable evidence would be sufficient to prove a negative. If someone wants to believe that the most inept US administration in recent history somehow successfully conceived and executed a conspiracy of stupendous scale without any leaks, without any screw ups, a conspiracy that further was of unnecessary and inexplicable complexity (flying planes into buildings AND blowing them up, somehow managing to prepare a fully occupied, busy businesss building for demolition without anyone noticing, attacking more targets than necessary to achieve justification for there after 911 policies, attacking targets who's destruction caused unnecessary negative financial impacts, etc. etc.), there's no reason that can convince them otherwise.

All we can do is at the whole thing and wonder at the whole sad affair.

[Slaughtermeyer]

Originally posted by MightyTiny All we can do is at the whole thing and wonder at the whole sad affair.

It wasn't sad for the Israeli Mossad agents who were caught celebrating "mission accomplished" on 9/11:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1102-07.htm

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/fiveisraelis.html

[Slaughtermeyer]

I neglected to mention that the vehicle headed for the George Washington Bridge which the arrested Israelis were driving was full of explosives.

[Dinner]

No date on that clip so it is very possible that it is taken out of context.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by MightyTiny
That's just what the conspiracy theorists do - they look for anything even slightly out of the ordinary, and then draw the most elaborate, unlikely and fantastical conclusions out of them.

Well that is the thing to do. Do you simply ignore things that don't look right?

Completely ignoring the countless difficulties and the sheer practical impossibility of maintaining such an elaborate conspiracy.

Have you already concluded that a conspiracy is impossible?

[Slaughtermeyer]

Originally posted by Oerdin
No date on that clip so it is very possible that it is taken out of context.

Here's another clip of the same report which includes the context:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoID=2023096989

[Darius871]

Originally posted by MightyTiny


Yes, that temperature range may be right for the actual september 11th event, but the fires burned in the rubble for a long time afterwards, and because of steel burning under the conditions in the rubble, temperatures can reach much higher. The conspiracy theorist assumes, arbitrarily, without basis, that the melting occurred during the impact (or explosion) event.

If you're interested, see http://www.debunking911.com/ironburns.htm

Originally posted by Slaughtermeyer

It wasn't sad for the Israeli Mossad agents who were caught celebrating "mission accomplished" on 9/11:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1102-07.htm

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/fiveisraelis.html

Slaughtermeyer, why is it that you always feel compelled to reply to any specific argument by posting a link regarding some completely unrelated report? Do you just have a list of pre-packaged posts to throw out perfunctorily regardless of the topic at hand?

Come to think of it, are you a bot?