True skepticism is vital for scientific inquiry. Pathological skepticism, however, as 9/11 sketopathy illustraets, is not about science, but faith.
True skepticism is vitally important to real science. Skepticism involves meticulously questioning beliefs or facts. Ideally, every scientist then is a true skeptic. To the scientist, all theories can never be proven true, only proven to be false. All observations must be rigorously verified before they are accepted as fact. All hypotheses must be supported by sound observations. Any one observation that a hypothesis does not predict results in the rejection of that hypothesis. Skeptopathy, or pathological skepticism, on the other hand is not a logical rational pursuit. Skeptopathy is the irrational belief that a theory or a piece evidence is false merely because it is unusual, goes against conventional wisdom, or is simply too difficult to imagine.[1] Skeptopathy then involves an irrational unsupported belief that something is untrue. Skeptopathy involves not fact and scientific rigor but blind faith that an unpleasant notion is false.
In particular, we can see that skeptopathy is rampant in relation to the events of September 11, 2001. Perhaps, the most salient example of this pathological skepticism can be seen in proponents of the official story on how WTC 7 collapsed. 7 World Trade Center (WTC 7) was a 47-story building that fell on 9/11 despite not being hit by a plane. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) attempted to officially explain how WTC 7 fell. Their explanation is documented in the report entitled Final Report of the Collapse of Building 7.[2] This report states that WTC 7 fell solely due to the effects of ordinary office fires. The most dumb-founding aspect of NIST’s theory is that it actually explains absolutely nothing about the WTC 7 collapse, from a purely scientific standpoint. The pronouncements contained within their report are completely unsupported by any facts or legitimate experiments. In fact, NIST’s own analysis actually refutes their own theory. The only experiment they performed supports this refutation. To understand this we need to examine their work under the microscope of falsifiability.
Since Karl Popper, falsifiability is seen as the most important and necessary criteria for determining the scientific validity of a theory. The physicist Steven Hawking gives a good explanation of falsifiability: “A good theory will describe a large range of phenomena on the basis of a few simple postulates and will make definite predictions which can be tested. If the predictions agree with the observations, the theory survives that test, though it can never be proven to be correct. On the other hand, if the observations disagree with the predictions, one has to discard or modify that theory. (At least that is what is supposed to happen. In practice we often question the accuracy of the observations and the reliability and moral character of those making the observations.)”[3] According to Popper: “If observation shows that the predicted effect is definitely absent, then the theory is simply refuted.”[4]
Does the NIST theory pass the falsification test? Well, due to the law of conservation of energy (first law of thermodynamics), the second law of thermodynamics (entropy) and the law of conservation of momentum, the NIST theory predicts that there can be no free fall at any time if WTC 7 fell solely due to the damage caused by the slow or non-simultaneous effects of fire. A slowly damaged steel-framed building will always have lower resisting structure to slow the rate of acceleration. Free fall however, requires negligible resisting structure. There is neither energy nor momentum available to both remove the considerable structure in the way and to accelerate downward at the rate of gravity. Energy and momentum must be conserved. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Now, think how fast a cast-iron frying pan’s handle heats up. This is entropy, the second law of thermodynamics in action. Slowly heated steel will result in dispersement of the heat throughout a skyscraper’s interconnected steel skeleton since heat always moves from the hotter region to the colder region. Heat does not move towards itself. It will only move away from itself, resulting in cooling. This dispersement will prevent major localized and simultaneous heat-related failures due to normal office fires.
By the notion of falsifiability, then, the fact that free fall occurred for at least 2.25 seconds[5] shows that the NIST theory has been completely refuted by this single observation of free fall alone. In fact, the only experiment NIST performed to validate their hypothesis, a 22-million dollar computer simulation of the WTC 7 fall, also shows no free fall period. NIST’s own experiments support the prediction that there will be no free fall period in a fire-initiated skyscraper collapse. So the NIST theory is obviously falsified or refuted. It is just plain wrong. Basic high school-level science concepts are telling us the NIST WTC 7 theory is false.
Note that falsifiability also plays an important part in the official NIST theory for the collapse of the towers, WTC 1 and WTC 2. A 2009 paper showed that the NIST theory predicts a massive jolt when the upper blocks of the towers hit the lower portions.[6] If you have ever been unfortunate enough to be in a car accident, even a minor one, you will remember the sickening jolt when your car hit another object. When your car hit the object, momentum transferred to the other object resulting in a deceleration or jolt. In each tower, though, there was no significant deceleration observed when the upper block hit the lower block. The fact that no jolt is seen in either WTC tower collapse refutes or falsifies this theory as well. The observation predicted by the hypothesis is not observed. By the notion of falsifiability then, the hypothesis is false.
The much maligned competing theory to the NIST WTC 7 theory is the controlled demolition theory. This theory predicts free fall for eight stories is possible in a skyscraper collapse if all columns are cleanly cut on every floor for eight stories. Can explosive shaped charges cut support columns cleanly? Yes.[7] How about much quieter thermate cutter charges? Yes, as experiments from the engineer Jonathan Cole show.[8] The thermate controlled demolition theory also predicts that a plethora of iron-rich micro-spheres would be produced, as would pools of molten iron and eutectic formations causing intergranular melting of some of the WTC steel. Cole’s experiments confirm these predictions, as do observations obtained elsewhere. The USGS found such iron-rich spheres[9] as did a set of reports prepared for Deutshe Bank by the RJ LeeGroup[10]. Several highly credible eyewitnesses report seeing pools of molten metal.[11] Eutectic formations causing intergranular melting were found on WTC 7 steel.[12]
So we have two theories of the WTC 7 collapse. One theory, the official NIST theory, is completely refuted. It does not explain a single observation. It predicts observations that do not occur. This theory is unscientific in every conceivable sense of the word. The other theory, the controlled demolition theory, appears to explain all known facts of the WTC 7 collapse and all experiments conducted thus far support its predictions. Skyscraper controlled demolition has decades of historical supporting observations. The controlled demolition theory appears to match all criteria of a scientific theory, whereas the NIST theory conforms to not one single criteria for a scientific theory. From the outset, the mainstream media has championed the unscientific official theory and ridiculed the only scientific alternative. Most educated people accept evolution over creationism. They accept round Earth theory over flat Earth theory. They accept the notion of a sun-centric solar system over an Earth-centric solar system. Why then do so many people continue to believe the official theory of 9/11? Conversely why do so few scientists publicly refute the NIST theory when its falsity is so blatantly obvious?
Skeptics regularly scoff at proponents of creationism. Such people are often characterized as extremely unintelligent and irrational. But as shown earlier, the official theory of the WTC 7 collapse has as much scientific merit as does creationism, flat Earth theory or an Earth-centric Universe. James Randi for one believes in the official story of 9/11,[13] as does Michael Shermer,[14] publisher of Skeptic magazine. These are two of some of the names many people think of when they think of science and critical reasoning. I myself accepted the official theory of 9/11 until 2006. I initially supported the invasion of Afghanistan. I had always considered myself a man of science and a hard-core skeptic. Yet I succumbed to a deception based completely on lies. Instead of questioning an explanation as per my scientific training I simply accepted it without nary a thought. Why?
Why do presumably rational intelligent scientists and otherwise critical thinkers reject science and fact when the subject area is too uncomfortable? The answer is skeptopathy, pathological skepticism. Skeptopathy involves rejecting facts and hypotheses not because they have been refuted or are improbable, but because they are simply too unpleasant to accept as being true. Scientists are people, after all, and subject to basic human irrationality and selfishness. Like many people, some scientists engage in denial. If reality is too difficult to face they will simply ignore it. Like many people too, some scientists are largely self-serving. Despite privately acknowledging the scientific truth, they will pretend that a disturbing hypothesis is false in order to protect or further their funding, careers, or reputation.
The official story of 9/11 is a shaky house of cards. The official story of WTC 7 is the load-bearing card. When you pull out this card, the whole official story of 9/11 comes crashing down. It is time for human society to grow up. It is time to put away childish things. We can no longer blindly trust those in authority over us. Every pronouncement must be accompanied by solid support and not simply be believed in without question. We need to take control over the information we accept and not simply be spoon fed pap from the corporate media. Lastly, we all need to recognize the phenomena of skeptopathy to prevent succumbing to it again. 9/11 may have happened 10 years ago but it is still affecting us. The massive military expenditures are incurring monumental debt. We are the ones paying the interest on this ballooning debt as will our children and our children’s children. We are the ones steadily losing our freedoms. Every new innocent killed in the never-ending “war on terror” adds to our collective blood-soaked guilt. It’s time to think of the comfort of others and not just our own. It’s time to stand up and say no.
References
1 http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skeptopathy
2 NIST NCSTAR 1A, Final Report of the Collapse of Building 7 http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201A.pdf
3 Steven Hawking, The Universe in a Nutshell, pg. 31, prgh. 3
4 Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, London: Routledge and Keagan Paul, 1963, pp. 33-39; from Theodore Schick, ed., Readings in the Philosophy of Science, Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company, 2000, pp. 9-13.
5 NIST NCSTAR 1A, Final Report of the Collapse of Building 7, pg. 45. http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201A.pdf
6 Prof. Graeme MacQueen and Tony Szamboti, “The Missing Jolt: A Simple Refutation of the NIST-Bazant Collapse Hypothesis,” Journal of 9/11 Studies, Volume 24 – January 2009 http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2008/TheMissingJolt7.pdf
7 http://www.mefeedia.com/watch/30834556
8 http://911blogger.com/news/2010-11-10/911-experiments-great-thermate-debate#comment-241377
9 Particle Atlas of World Trade Center Dust, pubs.USGS.gov, 2005, http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1165/table_1.html
10 Signature Assessment 130 Liberty Street Property, RJ LeeGroup, Inc., 12/2003, http://www.nyenvirolaw.org/WTC/130%20Liberty%20Street/Mike%20Davis%20LMDC%20130%20Liberty%20Documents/Signature%20of%20WTC%20dust/WTCDustSignature_ExpertReport.051304.1646.mp.pdf
11 Dr. Steven E. Jones, “Why Indeed Did the World Trade Center Buildings Completely Collapse?” Journal of 9/11 Studies, Volume 3 – September 2006, http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200609/Why_Indeed_Did_the_WTC_Buildings_Completely_Collapse_Jones_Thermite_World_Trade_Center.pdf
12 Barnett, J. R., Biederman, R.R. and R.D. Sisson, Jr., “An Initial Microstructural Analysis of A36 Steel from WTC Building 7,” Journal of the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society, 53/12:18 (2001).
13 http://www.myspace.com/prezbyter/blog/513485265
14 Michael Shermer, “Fahrenheit 2777”, Scientific American, June 2005. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fahrenheit-2777
When you consulted with people who demolish buildings for a living and asked them if they could set up for demolition a 47-story building full of people without anyone noticing — what did they answer?
And who were they?
Here’s what former Controlled Demolition, Inc. (CDI) employee Tom Sullivan has to say:
http://ae911truth.org/en/news-section/41-articles/529-tom-sullivan-eso.html
http://www.youtube.com/user/ae911truth?feature=mhum#p/u/2/u5IgqJXyLbg
Tom Sullivan who was nothing more that a photographer for CDI and sometimes was allowed to do grunt work like carry explosives for the skilled explosive guys who did the REAL controlled part of the controlled demolition.
ae911truth’s Richard Gage was nothing more than an architect, not a structural engineer with the skill to design anything near the scale of the WTC.
Let see ONE just ONE structural engineers who has designed let say, a 20 story building who say 9/11 was a controlled demolition.
There is a reason to be skeptical of truthers, after almost 10 year they have not come up with any real proof of a controlled demolition.
Kindly address the arguments on their facts and merits, David, rather than with ad hominem argumentation.
Your post is nothing but falsehoods. Tom Sullivan loaded explosives in buildings. To do that you must be a highly skilled explosive technician. A loader is responsible for the precise work of properly placing charges and setting the complex timing mechanisms. This _is_ doing the real controlled demolition work.
Show me one structual engineer who can adequately explain how a skyscraper falling straight down into its footprint due only to fire damage can have any period of free fall.
The reason to be skeptical of the official story supporters is because they have absolutely no evidence of fire-caused collapse just unsupported hand-waving speculation. We OTOH do have actual evidence of controlled demolition as the article documents.
As per the scientific method, controlled demolition is the only scientific contender to explain the fall of WTC 7.
Well the people at CDI say he was hired to take pictures, and may have done some grunt work. Guys like Jack Loizeaux of CDI do the real work of deciding where explosives are placed and how much even if they don’t do the actual manual labor. Loizeaux say it was NOT a controlled demolition and he would know better.
David, by “grunt work”, you mean placing explosives, which you have to be highly trained to do. Nobody has ever suggested Tom shares the level of expertise of Loizeaux. As for your appeal-to-authority fallacy, one could just as easily say, “Danny Jowenko says it WAS a controlled demolition, and he would know.”
Of course you know Danny Jowenko has said the towers WERE NOT A CONTROLLED DEMOLITION. And he didn’t even know WTC fell on 9/11, he thought it was days later.
I am not the one arguing an appeal to authority fallacy. His views about the twin towers notwithstanding, Jowenko said WTC 7 was a controlled demolition, no question about it (and, yes, he was told when shown the collapse this was on 9/11). Point being relying solely upon this expert’s view or that expert’s view to support one’s own conclusions is a logical fallacy and does not actually address the facts or merits of one or the other hypothesis.
9/11 terror attack was designed and implemented by Israelis and Bush administration against American people to frame Muslims. The evidence so far supports this fact.
Watch the following video which points out the facts on the ground once more.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/07/israel-and-9-11/
Everyone except US government/zionist agents like Chomsky who brush off millions of evidence on the ground to protect an apartheid state, the ‘Jewish state’.
Don’t trust Chomsky who accepts the official lies about 9/11 and label those who do not with conspirators.
Chomsky is not a “Zionist agent”. He may be wrong in his views of 9/11 (and saying even if the government did it “Who cares?” is just plain ignorant). But he’s not a “Zionist agent”. There isn’t a scholar more critical of Israel and the Zionist project than Noam Chomsky.
FACT: Free fall can happen without controlled demolition. Fire caused much of the internal structure to fail over a 7 hour period. So some small parts of the end collapse would fall like there is no support. Fact is even for that part it took 13 seconds for a complete collapse of WTC7, from the time the East penthouse falls inward to the fall of the north face shell it was 13 seconds.
And then you have the fact WTC7 was seen to be leaning, this was even measured by the FDNY, Since when do controlled demolitions lean for hours?
And let not forget the huge fire that raged without being fought, not exactly ideal conditions for carrying explosive around in.
FACT: A fire induced progressive collapse cannot cause a 47-story steel-framed skyscraper to collapse suddenly and symmetrically at free-fall acceleration. This violates the law of conservation of energy. Free-fall means all of the building’s potential energy was converted to kinetic energy, which means there was no energy available to buckle columns, as required by the fire-induced collapse hypothesis.
FACT: NIST’s own analysis shows that the fires its hypothesis requires to be burning on the 12th floor in the northeast corner in order for thermal expansion to cause the hypothesized collapse initiation had already burned out by that time.
Gee… maybe it had something to do with several million tonnes of concrete falling down nearby. Do you think it likely that any builing that close wouldn’t be seriously damaged? This is like elementary common sense, man.
Just what are you saying? The towers weren’t controlled demos but WTC7 was? If so, a ton of your truther friends would call you a deluded sheep for not also thinking the towers were controlled demos. But the thing is you can’t have it both ways, since the collapses look nothing like each other.
Brendan, NIST itself acknowledged in its final report that the damage to 7 from 1 was not an initiating or determinative factor in its collapse. You should educate yourself on the facts.
Yes WTC7 would have stood, except for the fires that could not be fought. Fire killed 7, nothing else.
Got proof to the contrary? lets see it. NOT questions, questions mean nothing, only ignorance of the event.
Yes, I have proof to the contrary. WTC 7 collapsed at free-fall acceleration. Free-fall means all of the building’s potential energy was converted to kinetic energy, which means there was no energy available to buckle columns, as required by the fire-induced collapse hypothesis.
Furthermore, NIST’s own analysis shows that the fires its hypothesis requires to have been in the NE corner of the 12th floor had already long gone out, and moved on to the W side of the building. Just to name one other fatal flaw to the fire-induced collapse hypothesis. It’s you, David, who has no evidence to support your view.
So you are not aware that once steel has been heat stressed and is sagging it is weakened and can’t supports the weight it once did?
All the energy need to make a building fall is stored in the building as potential gravitational energy, that is how a controlled demolition works, BUT it is also how a fire induced collapse works.
You really need to brush up on basic physics.
I’ve no interest in debating dishonest strawman arguments, David.
As for basic physics, I repeat: Free-fall means all of the building’s potential energy was converted to kinetic energy, which means there was no energy available to buckle columns, as required by the fire-induced collapse hypothesis.
Well clearly this stuff is way beyond your understanding. You do know the difference between dynamic and static loads? Learn a little something and you may eventually get it right.
David, you hypocrite! Free-fall means THERE WERE NO LOADS, either static OR dynamic, on the columns. This is basic, elementary high school physics. Free-fall means all of the building’s potential energy was converted to kinetic energy, which means there was no energy available to buckle columns, as required by the fire-induced collapse hypothesis. The columns offered no resistance, which means there were no loads on the columns. They were simply removed from the equation.
By the way, iron-rich micro-spheres are also created in the cutting and burning of steel with torches and cutting wheels use during clean-up. Thermic lances where also use heavily to cut steel to be hauled away. Funny how no one has shown a large chunk of this cooled molten steel, you only have stories of some guy who heard another guy say he saw it.
But, David, iron-rich microspheres from cleanup operations, even assuming their chemical makeup would also be consistent with those found in the dust, cannot account for spheroids found from dust flows caused by the collapses and samples collected prior to when those cleanup operations began. And cleanup operations cannot account for the finding of unreacted thermitic material in the dust which, when reacted, creates identical spheroids.
The dust samples used were not collected right after the event, If fact it is not clear where or when Steven Jones got his samples.
Seems like you are merely repeating when guys like Jones say without looking at how he did his research. I did and it is very weak to down right fraud.
David, it is clearly you who hasn’t actually looked at the research. Harrit, et al, documented where and when their dust samples were collected in their peer-reviewed article. There is also the findings of the US Geological Survey and the RJ Lee Group, which describes the spheroids as being a part of the “signature” of the dust flow caused by the collapses of the buildings. It behooves you to actually do your own research before suggesting it is others who are ignorant.
Yes I read Harrit and Jones paper and it is very flawed. No one know where those sample came from or when.
Many truthers are now calling Jones a dis info agent for even bringing up the whole thermite thing, it has proven to be so silly.
Well, other scientists are free to go collect their own sample and document the chain of custody, as Harrit, et al, did, and report their own findings. Simply dismissing evidence that does not suit your view is the height of ignorance.
David Kyte, I have commented over the years on this issue and have frequently come across your type of argument at comment sites – ie. everything the USG told us about 911 is the truth and nothing but the truth so we should all move along as there’s nothing to see.
For me, the biggest smoking gun is the US Department of Commerce’s NIST Report on WTC 7. It is a highly informative artefact and has earned a place in psychology theses exploring human suggestibility. It comprises a cover-up – and a rather revealing and embarrassing one, at that. If everything we have been told about 911 is the truth and nothing but the truth – why the need for this cover-up?
As Fullerton so eloquently writes:
“The official story of 9/11 is a shaky house of cards. The official story of WTC 7 is the load-bearing card. When you pull out this card, the whole official story of 9/11 comes crashing down”.
You may only cross your fingers and defend shaky house-of-card narratives for so long. Eventually, the hard facts and reality catch up and it can be a bit of a shock to the system. Rupert Murdoch had one such cold-water wake-up call this week.
Computer/mathematical simulations on something a complex as the collapse of WTC 7 is, necessarily, chock full of assumptions and gazillions of variables. If we can say something was falsified, we can only say that a building *as was simulated* might not have collapsed from fire alone.
All that aside, however, the single most compelling evidence in support of the official story is that a conspiracy of such scope couldn’t possibly be kept under wraps. Of the *thousands* of conspirators necessary to pull off such a feat, not one has had a turn of conscience and come forward to say something like “yeah! I placed explosives in the World Trade Center!”
The ability to keeping a conspiracy a secret is inversely proportional to the *square* of the number of people privy to the secret. If anything is impossible; it would be trying to keep that many mouths shut.
Mike perhaps you should re-read the article. It does not say the NIST theory is falsified because the model shows no free fall. It says the theory is falsified because it predicts an observation that didn’t occur, no period of free fall. The model merely agrees with this falsification.
As to the argument that no one could have pulled off a controlled demolition, you provide absolutely no support of this, only speculation. You are also committing the argument from incredulity logical fallacy: I can’t believe it therefore it must not be true. There is no science in your arguments just illogic. Science says the official theory is false. If you don’t like that you need to construct a scientific alternative.
So your argument is a controlled demolition could be possible because no one can prove it was not. Talk about science illiteracy. I real science the burden is one you yo prove it was possible, NOT for us to prove it wasn’t. That is just basic science.
There are truthers who say space beams were used to destroy the towers, do you say it was possible because you can’t prove it wasn’t?
No, David, it is simply that the argument that it must have been a fire-induced collapse because a controlled demolition would be impossible is a fallacy. If you are scientifically literate, that should be no problem for you to understand.
Mike, you are speculating on unknowns. If you turn to the cold, hard science, and realize that free-fall eliminates the fire-induced collapse hypothesis, well, “eliminate the impossible and whatever remains, however unlikely, must be the truth”.
As one of those mentioned here, I must comment. I expressed my doubts about whether the science was well enough developed to determine that global warming was taking place, but also stated that it was well beyond my expertise. I was offering my uncertainty, not a conclusion. However, the reactions that I received were equally divided between “Thank you for supporting GW,” and “Thank you for denying GW,” neither of which I had expressed. We have here further proof that people will read into any claim what they want to be true…
James Randi.
Thanks for the response Mr. Randi. But could we get an explanation as to why you support an easily falsifiable theory like the official theory of 9/11 which has as much scientific credibility as creationism, flat Earth theory or the theory of an Earth-centric solar system? And why do you reject the only scientific alternative, the controlled demolition theory? Your position on 9/11 is clear. You are not on the fence as you claim with GW.
It would make my month if Mr. Randi actually responded. I’m perplexed as to how intelligent free-thinkers like Randi and Chomsky can believe in the official conspiracy theory given the abundance of publicly available information on the subject. Perhaps they haven’t seen footage of building 7’s implosion? It “clicked” for me immediately after seeing that. But then again, I’m an engineer, not a magician or linguist.
The controlled demolition of all three buildings on 9/11 is blatantly obvious to anyone with an open mind who has done any serious research on the subject. Don’t waste your time arguing with the likes of David Kyte on internet message boards. I wasted over an hour of my life arguing with him on HuffPost a few weeks ago. He isn’t interested in the truth. If you want to make a difference, tell your neighbor, or your best friend, or you mailman, to watch a video of building 7 collapsing. I’ve yet to meet an intelligent person who can watch that and not immediately face a drastic paradigm shift.
You won’t address me because I know more that you on the subject and know more on the science of the event. So it’s is best for you to run away and look of lower hanging fruit.
So if you saw the Titanic sink it would LOOK just like it was torpedoed, are you saying it was because it simple looks like it?
David, I’d address you all day if you were interested in debating the facts and truths of 9/11. It’s obvious from your latest post that you have no interest in doing so. You ignored all the relevant facts that have been brought up and introduced two new arguments about who knows more about the event, and some ridiculous nonsense about the titanic. You’re the king of the straw-man argument! Once you explain how a body that has used ALL of its gravitational potential energy to accelerate (9.8m/s^2), can still perform work (buckling massive steel columns), I will be happy to continue our debate. And if by some chance you are able to explain this phenomenon, rest assured you can take it to the bank, because you will have succeeded in disproving Newtonian Mechanics.
Yet you run every time. It is clear you have a very weak grasp of the physics of the event. Most likely only talking point you gleaned from some conspiracy theorist site, that you don’t even understand. To explain the event you have yo be smart enough to understand the science. I doubt you have that ability.
As in science you fail to understand basic logic. Saying something has to be A because it looks like A, is pure stupidity. Like the Titanic, it can LOOK like a ship that was torpedoed but it was not. Get it?
If you do understand I should not have to explain anything to you, Questions mean nothing in a logical discussion. Only ignorance on the part of the questioner. Questions are a lame tactic used by conspiracy theorist to try and get out from presenting a clear, logical and fact based hypnosis.
If a bird looked like a duck, walked like a duck, and quacked like a duck, would you say it was a duck simply because it looked, walked, and quacked like such?
LOL!
Can any proponents of the official story explain the ‘simultanous’ nature of the collapse of 7? Keep in mind that this sort of steel building collapse has never happened before due to fire.
But steel building have collapsed due to fire, that is why steel frame building are required by codes to be fireproofed. These were certainly the largest but not the first. And these were the only ones to have been hit by jets going 450MPH and filled with 60000 gallons of fuel.
You are displaying flawed logic. Again I bring up the Titanic as an example, it was the first unsinkable ship to sink due to ice. You do know just because it didn’t happen before means it can’t happen.
No, David, no steel-framed highrise has ever collapsed due to fire, either before 9/11 or since.
WTC 7 was not hit by a jet.
Like talk about science illiteracy. Seems people here don’t know nothing on this Earth can fall at free fall. In reality free fall can only happen in a vacuum.
So the Shyam Sunder was referring to this technical reality, but truthers being for the most part ignorant of science didn’t know this.
Gosh, David, you’re so right! And since WTC 7 was not in a vacuum, even though the air resistance was not measurable and it collapsed at an acceleration indistinguishable to the resolution of the video from that of gravity, therefore fire MUST have done it! LOL! Look, David, it’s elementary physics. Free-fall (yeah, yeah) means all the building’s potential energy was converted to kinetic energy, which means THERE WAS NO ENERGY AVAILABLE TO BUCKLE COLUMNS, AS REQUIRED BY THE FIRE-INDUCED COLLAPSE HYPOTHESIS.
Sure, let’s talk about scientific illiteracy, and shortcomings.
Plenty of things can free fall in atmosphere. The limitation to which you allude but clearly do not understand is terminal velocity. A falling object approaches terminal velocity (as a consequence of aerodynamic drag) asymptotically, and even then only if the ratio of aerodynamic drag to mass is great, and if the duration of fall is long enough. The scientific question of the day is, is a building sufficiently heavy to overcome any force of aerodynamic drag that *might* exist within those few seconds it takes for a building to fall?
Put another way, could a building under unrestricted collapse have a terminal velocity that is different than one in unrestricted collapse, say in a vacuum? You might be glad to know the theoretical answer is yes, Mr. Smartypants, because terminal velocity is a phenomenon that only manifests in atmosphere, but unfortunately, in the current context, the value of the difference is thoroughly negligible.
In other words, if it were possible to construct an experiment whereby two identical buildings were to be taken down with controlled demolition, with one building being in Earth atmosphere, and the other being contained within a perfect vacuum, the time taken for the top floor to reach the bottom would be virtually identical in both scenarios, with a variation of perhaps a few milliseconds.
The term “freefall” can be quite correctly used in the discussion at hand, and I am looking forward to your rebuttal.
Mike Bruno comments on how it would be impossible to pull off a conspiracy of this size with the “thousands” of people necessary to do so. The corollary can also be expressed: how would it be possible for twenty Saudis and a whole web of supporting personnel, supported and financed theoretically from somewhere in the Middle East, have evaded the CIA, FBI, Interpol, Mossad, all the security personnel wherever they were ‘training’ and any other government levels of policing and spying that were current at that time? I do not have the answer, but the mainstream media denial of conspiracy (at the hands of the neocons or whomever) is just as shallow as the support given to the conspiracy idea that twenty Saudis evaded all the surveillance of the world in order to perpetrate the attack.
Great observation, Jim!
Mike Bruno: “There are truthers who say space beams were used to destroy the towers, do you say it was possible because you can’t prove it wasn’t?”
No-one I have ever talked to gives any credence to Ms Judy Woods and her rather odd little “space beams” theory.
Dr Greg Jenkins interviews Judy Wood at the Washington Press Club – and debunks her rather thoroughly. Wood invented her own word ‘dustification’ (!) and note how she never wants to be pinned down to values and solid empirical definitions, preferring to giggle about sticking forks and food in microwaves.
Judy Wood is part of the Fake 911 “Truther” Movement, used to smear other researchers by association.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJZrj0leylc
Note to Jeremy Hammond: You and Michael Fullerton are doing something right here because you’ve attracted the band of Usual Suspects who’ve populated other sites over the years (Independent, Guardian, SMH, BBC among them) for months on end, trying (until they were blue in the face) to distract and obfuscate.
James Randi – if indeed that is you. Your professed followers peopled the BBC Editors Blog “Conspiracy Files 911” for months on end.
They eventually backed off when they were shown to have a hole in their epistemological bucket.
While professing to be neutral, unbiased sceptics they were not prepared to call for an open, unbiased, impartial, independent, transparent international enquiry, with subpoena powers, into what went down in September 2001. I wonder why not?
David Kyte – got ‘hypnosis’ (sic) on the brain?
D.K.: July 20, 2011 at 8:28 pm: “Questions are a lame tactic used by conspiracy theorist to try and get out from presenting a clear, logical and fact based hypnosis”.
More info on Judy Woods “Space Beams” theory.
AE911Truth calls it “A Hypothesis in Search of Facts” and has a good article on the subject at their site:
“Some have suggested that much of the structural steel of the WTC skyscrapers was turned to dust, or “dustified” – a term used by Judy Wood, the primary proponent of this hypothesis – with some type of directed energy weapon (DEW). Some of the observations cited by Wood include the voluminous dust created during the Twin Towers’ destruction, the “craters” in WTC 5 and 6, “toasted” cars, and small holes in glass windows.
“While Wood and AE911truth agree that the official story of an “inevitable” collapse by gravity alone is impossible because it conflicts with laws of physics, we completely differ on the mechanism of the destruction.
“The scientific method requires us to look at all the available evidence and then assess various explanations for their ability to account for the evidence. At some point, the inferior explanations must be discarded if there is to be continued progress in an investigation, just as in pure science. It is our opinion that the DEW hypothesis is not just weak; it is not supported by the evidence at all. We provide only a general discussion here, referring the reader to references for a thorough understanding.” …
.. Read the rest of this informative article at:
http://911blogger.com/news/2011-05-06/ae911truth-faq-6-what-s-your-assessment-directed-energy-weapon-dew-hypothesis
The first thing I want to make perfectly clear is that I used to attend Church, but I have stopped doing going to Church years ago, and I really do not wish to discuss the nature of my sins or my human weaknesses with other People, because it is private.
If we read the Bible we will see examples of People who have served God, but they have decided to stop serving God, because of selfish reasons.
I saw that there was no balance in the article, nor was there any balance with those who posted a comment.
I wondered why the topic of Creation verses evolution debate was needed for this particular topic.
since most People in America believe in Creation, and because they know that they are educated, then this may make them not believe an atheist, who is clearly uneducated as to the Origin of Life as far as they are concerned, or who is knows that Creation is the truth, and is deliberately misleading with others as they see it with his views on evolution theory.
They would ask themselves, what else has get wrong, or what else is he trying to mislead us on, and they will think that he trying to deliberately mislead them that 9/11 was a conspiracy by the Ruling Elites of America, which I actually believe is the truth of 9/11.
I believe that People can and do believe in God and Creation and the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory, and I think that the author of the article should have done the same.
In my opinion, it was unnecessary to bring up a topic that People disagree on, unless of course the entire article was an article on the Creation verses evolution debate.
I know that Jesus is coming back soon to Judge the World, and I know what my fate will be, and I am comfortable with it at much as can be expected under the circumstances.
I want to that I am not impress with being called uneducated, because I believe in God, Creation, and the Bible, and it might surprise many People just how many Educated People with PhDs actually believe in God and the Bible.
I cannot forget the things that I have learned, nor can I stop believing the things I know to be true.
I want to say that I can Preach the Bible on a par with many People, even though I have not read it for such a long time.
I have published several articles on the Internet, and they should be able to be found at, http://shelleytherepublican.com/2010/11/01/how-to-end-atheism.aspx, and they are the ones that are published under the moniker of THE.
The best way to deal with David Kyte and others of his persuasion is to ignore them. Keep the discussion open for genuine enquirers of the TRUTH only. The ludicrous comments about Richard Gage AIA for example “nothing more than an architect who couldn’t design buildings like the twin towers” illuminates the consummate ignorance of a typical denier. Some of Richard’s vast designs incorporating steel structures even more complex than WC1 and 2 prove it. Here in Cambridge, UK. I deal with some of the leading structural engineers and all believe the WTC buildings were demolished.
ColinB
Ignore the David Kyte troll.Mossad funds a band of people like him to try and confuse the obvious truth with disinformation and utter mischief.Stick with the salient facts.WTC7 wasn’t hit by anything yet collapsed in its footprint at a speed consistent with controlled demolition.This has never occured due to fires with ANY steel-reinforced skyscraper anywhere in the world.EVER.Contemporary witnesses and first-responders reported hearing a series of explosions.Molten metal was reported by numerous independent observers for days after the event.Office fires simply do not burn hot enough to melt fireproofed reinforced steel beams and cause them to collapse,let alone leaving a pool of molten metal for days at the base of the destruction.Stick to the facts and they lead only to a controlled demolition.As leasehold owner Silverstein publicly admitted on PBS about WTC7, “We made the decision to pull it”.”Pull it”is the industry term for ordering the detonation of explosives in the controlled demolition of a building.
These are the facts Kyte,now troll someplace else where you might have a chance to confuse people.
“Slowly heated steel will result in dispersement of the heat throughout a skyscraper’s interconnected steel skeleton since heat always moves from the hotter region to the colder region. Heat does not move towards itself. It will only move away from itself, resulting in cooling. This dispersement will prevent major localized and simultaneous heat-related failures due to normal office fires.”
That is proof positive that the huge steel support system could not be weakened to the point of failure let alone cause the entire building to fail.
I see comments opposing “truthers” are deleted. Nice freedom of speech these clowns have.
This article is FULL of errors and childish logic.
Yes, The Man, I deleted your previous comment, as it violated FPJ’s commenting policy. Comments consisting solely of personal insults aren’t tolerated. If you think this article is full of errors and invalid logic, you are welcome to present an actual argument, but ad hominem attacks will not be tolerated. Fair warning.
Great write up, and explanation on why seemingly intelligent people ignore the facts that are right in front of them. I’m no scholar or engineer, but even I can tell from watching, and reading the works of others that the collapses simply don’t make sense, especially the laws of physics.
To me it is obvious that the powers that be and have authority over us, are terrifying those that would otherwise speak up. Many witnesses have died of suspicious causes since 9-11.
The American people who continue to believe the lies of the government despite so much proof of past deceptions, is what saddens me the most.
I can’t help but wonder if a mass brainwashing on society, has slowly been taking place throughout the years.
Great read. Too bad I’m 7 years late….