We were discussing the impact hole in the south wall, not the north.

I think you are confusing the Case A/B impact damage and the Case A/B fire model. Read it all again and you will find that the Case A impact damage and Case B fire model were the ones that were eventually used.

I find the NIST collapse explanation perfectly reasonable. It does not conflict in any way with my knowledge of how structures behave. I have yet to see any reason at all in your over-elaborate CD theory.

You keep ignoring the damage to the structure. If, say, 10% of the columns are damaged, then the remaining ones are carrying an average of 11% more load. Most of this load will be on the columns adjacent to the damaged ones, which can well be carrying 30 or 40 % more load. If you want the exact figues, I suggest you ask NIST, as they are the ones who did the calculations. You keep saying "1%", but this is totally misleading.

You are the one who is contradicting Newton. As the collapse progresses, the lower block is impacted by the original upper block plus all the debris from the destroyed floors that were originally part of the lower block. Whether these floors are intact or damaged, they still have momentum, they still cause damage, you cannot just attempt to ignore them.

I’m not going to waste my time giving detailed responses when your posts contain more rhetoric and less explanation the further we go on.


I understand the difference and further, it appears you have no response to what I said.



It isn’t what I want; just the plain fact heat was being lost from what were inefficient fires.



In other words, the photographic and video evidence shows yellow areas in the molten flow – look for yourself.



I haven’t seen the comedy and the explosive squibs at the Tower cores would not be heard over the noise of the collapse.



No. The link is vague, not providing any figures, and does not explain why a circuit should heat areas to in excess of its own melting temperature.



Learn to read, the above isn’t what I said.



I asked you the simple question – do you believe it is impossible?

Your memory is terrible - I gave a list of evidence indicating controlled demolition to be probable here.



We have discussed how it is a fringe rather than the engineering ‘community’ who produce the official 9/11 theory. For every professional you name who agrees with the official story, I can produce one who doesn’t.



The fire has to be focussed in an area for over 3 hours just to overcome the fireproofing and longer still to weaken the steel to any significant level. Looking at the Tower fire models, 1,000^oC temperatures in areas come and pass as fuel is used up and the fires move on. I am asking what fuel might have caused a prolonged and intense fire at the specific location of column 79 for so long?



NIST say the column failed between floors 5-7.



Exactly – faith in information you see as from an authoritative source – you believe what you are told to believe.

Then you might like to use the term ‘exit hole’ as everyone else uses ‘impact hole’ to describe where the aircraft entered the buildings. This doesn’t change the fact the impact hole matched best with Case A yet NIST went on to use the more severe Case B in their collapse analysis.



You read it again! And if you find Case A impact damage was used for collapse analysis, quote and reference the section. To make it easy for you, here is what I am currently reading from NCSTAR1-6 page 235 onward: -

“WTC 1 and WTC 2 global models were subjected to Case B and Case D aircraft damage and fires, respectively.”

”The global model of WTC 1 with creep, plastic buckling of columns, plasticity, and nonlinear geometry was analyzed with Case B structural damage and temperature histories.

”Case B structural and passive fire protection damage after the aircraft impact…”

… etc, etc, etc. Every figure in NCSTAR1-6, Chapter 8, “Structural Response of the WTC Towers to Aircraft Impact Damage and Fire”, references Case B.



Ask NIST? What a complete joke – NIST were tasked with publishing an investigation that should make this information clearly available. It is not good enough to say “can well be” this or that, I want to know for a fact whether the impact damage was vastly within the safety factors of the Tower design or not. I keep saying 1% as that is all the information NIST give! And by the way, each and every core column in the Towers was over-designed to carry 225% of its expected loads.



So the debris from crushed floors acted as a ‘shield’ to the upper block as it ploughed its way intact through the lower section. What utter crap. It doesn't make a difference the amount of debris as the mass of the upper block was still acting on the lower and therefore there must still be an equal force on each.

And your reply is of course nothing like that at all.
You clearly misunderstand completely the difference between heat and temperature, or how something can become hotter than its ignition temperature. As a result, you are floundering around with nonsensical arguments.

...and I have given my reasons for not finding anything in that list that I would consider evidence.

NIST had help from lots of outside organisations, hundreds of engineers. For every professional who has published a peer-reviewed technical paper on the collapse, you can produce no-one who has published a peer-reviewed technical paper on the CD theory.

Building contents, as in any such fire. What kept the Windsor Building burning for a whole day?

No they don't. They say it's a possible location, and they also agree with Gilsanz about those floors being the critical ones for spreading the collapse.

Faith in a source whose methods I understand, and where, unlike the J911S papers, I do not see any obvious flaws.

See NCSTAR1-6, bottom of page 186. Only the Case A impact model results were used for input into the Case A and Case B fire models. All your above quotes refer to the Case B fire model, page 235 is in the fire model section, explaining which fire model they chose. As I said before, they used Case A impact and Case B fire.

Why is that a joke? NIST have already provided a lot of responses to issues raised about their reports.

I imagine that NIST thought that only specialists would be interested in that sort of detail. If you are also interested, ask them.

It doesn't matter how overdesigned a structure is, it will still collapse if it experience loads beyond its ultimate ones.

The debris falls on the lower block, not the upper one. That's the direction gravity works.

As far as I am concerned we are not talking about ignition temperatures. The WTC office fires allegedly had a maximum temperature of approximately 1,000^oC and the batteries a maximum temperature of approximately 300^oC. How can the fire exceed these temperatures? To do this, all I can think is that you must be assuming a blowtorch effect, where the heat becomes more focussed, or a furnace effect where there is great heat retention in an area. The fires in reality were random, dispersed and open. Please discuss; explain your thinking.

Doesn’t change the fact the evidence is supportive of controlled demolition whether you wish to brush it off or not. To claim there is nothing which could be considered supportive of controlled demolition, as you do, is nothing more than a mental block. Even if you want to claim the evidence is due to ‘other’ effects, it still doesn’t nullify that it could be due to controlled demolition.



You seem to have forgotten, you commented yourself that the peer-review process is in fact fallible.



The Windsor building fire moved throughout the entire structure – it did not ‘hang around’ at a fixed location after the fuel had been burnt off. Again, please look at the Tower fire models where fire temperatures rise and diminish in an area within a 1-2 hour timeframe. There must have been a mighty source of fuel at column 79’s location in WTC7 for the fireproofing and steelwork to be defeated. How about the First Interstate Bank fire which burned for over 4 hours and gutted 4 floors – why no severe structural damage there?



It has just been shown you don’t even know in any detail what the result of column 79’s failure would be, let alone methods for understanding the complete WTC7 collapse.

Page 186 you reference, is dealing with the fire/temperature conditions. In this section, it is correct that Case A impact damage was used for Case A & B temperature histories.

When we reach Chapter 8, “Structural Response of the WTC Towers to Aircraft Impact Damage and Fire”, through Chapter 9, “Probable Collapse Sequences”, only Case B impact damage is used for the analysis.

As I said before, they use Case B impact damage – read it.



I believe within Chapter 8 I may have found what I am looking for – a figure that shows each column before and after impact. I will go through it properly when I have time. That it is again based on Case B impact damage, I am unsure how reliable the information it details will be in comparison to reality anyway.



Well, doh. Let me add, so we have a balance – it doesn’t matter how under-designed a structure is, it will not collapse if it does not experience loads beyond its ultimate.



It doesn’t make a difference as whilst debris is crushed, ejected and forced past the intact lower structure, all the time an equal force is being applied to the falling upper block, ie the debris does not create some kind of cushion protecting the upper block as that would necessitate the lower block being destroyed before the upper block got there. Under no circumstances should the upper block be able to plough its way intact through the lower block as witnessed. It defies the laws of physics. That is... unless the lower block was already severely weakened.

Why do you think a shorted battery cannot exceed 300 deg C? Shorting the battery generates a lot of energy. Some of this energy goes into melting the lead in the battery, but this does not mean that there is no energy left over to further increase the temperature of the molten lead. Note the possibility of vapourising lead mentioned in the link. That means something like 1700 deg.

You may well be right about the use of Case B in the later analysis, it was certainly only Case A in the bit I was reading. In any event, as I have said repeatedly, the actual damage observed to the south wall was greater than Case A, so I have no problem with the more severe Case B. The Purdue simulation appears to be closer to Case B.

So after all your disparaging of NIST, they had published the data you want? Perhaps another apology is in order, though I've learned not to expect one.

Debris that comes loose falls away from the upper block and down on to the lower block. It starts to damage the lower block at levels the upper block has yet to reach.

Basically, all the things on your list can be explained without invoking CD as a causal factor. They are not evidence for CD. Some of them are just plain silly, like the Silverstein one. He is clearly discussing pulling the firefighting effort. See all these quotes which use the word in that sense:
http://wtc7lies.googlepages.com/%22pull%22...htersfromdanger

But not so fallible as to let a daft theory like CD get published.

...and even without hanging around the Windsor Building fire managed to bring down the steel structure. You are once again building up a set of conditions that do not match reality.

After all this time, I know perfectly well that if I got the details from Gilsanz and explained them to you, you wouldn't believe me. Cut out the middle man. Gilsanz has the model, ask him.

Once the lead melts at 327^oC the battery is destroyed and the short broken, ie the circuit breaks once the lead is molten. Energy ‘leftover’? Additional heat will cease to be generated and the remains should cool down if anything. This is not to mention the possibility the electrolyte will begin to leak and maybe even explode at over 100^oC, again destroying the battery and preventing further heat generation.

Don’t get me wrong – I am not saying a shorted battery is not an extreme hazard causing high temperatures. For sure, individual components of a battery could breakdown, vaporise or even explode, starting fires and leaving a melted mess. I just don’t see that the heat generated is going to make any great difference to the overall alleged existing 1,000^oC fire in WTC2.

And no way on Earth are batteries or office fires going to heat the large quantity of molten metal we see flowing from WTC2 to the extreme temperature yellow/lemon colour witnessed. Not only heat the large amount of molten metal while it pools thinly on the floor away from the upper temperatures, but also sustain that temperature until it flows from the façade.

There is good reason NIST produced the excuse of burning debris mixed with the molten flow, and that is because they knew realistically nothing in the Towers could provide enough heat to give the observed effect. The official fairytale has now flip-flopped between aluminium to debris to liquid fuel to batteries to lead all the while ignoring the blatant fact...



... that the molten flow is visually identical to a thermite reaction. Another thing setting the flow apart from plain molten metal, for good measure – in contrast to the office fires, the white smoke from the molten flow is indicative of aluminium oxide, produced in a thermite reaction.

Every single quote in the link refers to “pull back”, “pull out” or such. None repeat the standalone “pull” comment, certainly not followed by the sentence, “and then we watched the building collapse” as Silverstein does.

• Sudden onset of virtually symmetrical, near freefall, complete collapses with visible ‘squibs’
• High-temperature steel corrosion reported by FEMA
• Molten iron spheres found by Steven Jones
• Molten metal flow from WTC2
• Extreme ‘hot spots’ in the debris pile
• Eyewitness and media accounts of multiple explosions below the impact zones
• Rescue workers stating WTC7 was about to “blow up”
• FBI reporting they believed “secondary devices” were in the Towers
• Larry Silverstein’s “pull it” comment
• Mossad agents reported with explosives in their van on 9/11

Now, sure you can make up numerous, random and farfetched excuses for all of the above. At the same time it is also clear that a single swift explanation - controlled demolition – could account for every point and more.



I’m not sure what engineering value it would have to produce a paper showing how controlled demolition of the WTC buildings could be carried out. It isn’t in question that it could be done.



No, the Windsor building fire brought down thin external, minimally fireproofed columns on some floors. In relation to WTC7, you didn’t address the Tower fires which diminish in short timeframes or comment on the First Interstate Bank fire that did not cause any severe damage to the steelwork.



I thought I was discussing the issues with you, not Gilsanz. It is becoming increasingly apparent you ignore or ‘pass the buck’ where problems you cannot explain arise.

Eh… something is missing… what could it be? Ah yes, our whole line of discussion about NIST using impact Case B for the structural response and collapse sequence of WTC1! Now why ever would you ‘forget’ to respond to that? Could it possibly be that you read the investigation properly and figured they did use Case B for this most vital section of the report?

Edit: Ah, you remembered and added this later. ...


"May well"?

Now I want to know why the severe cases were used for Chapters 8 & 9 when NIST earlier confirmed that the base cases were closest match to the observable impact damage. No actually, don’t try to explain – it is plainly indefensible. Oh yeah, but that’s why you tried to ignore it, isn’t it? As I have said, the absolute best the official side could argue is a situation between Case A & B, but still closer to A. The fact NIST had two models then picked the one furthest from observable truth to make the collapses work is... words fail me. All of the same is also true for WTC2 where the more severe Case D was used. In light of this and other issues, I despair at the use of the word "investigation" in regard to NIST's work.

That you have "no problem" with NIST using a model that is furthest from the truth doesn't surprise me. Not at all. You never have been interested in the truth from the start.



I would guess your desperate thrust and request for an apology here is some sort of an attempt to deflect from what I spoke about above. The only thing I would be apologising for is assuming you knew the NIST report well… my bad. These figures aren’t exactly what I was looking for in any case, being based only on the unrealistic severe cases and showing the core but not exterior columns.

On your logic a bomb would stop being a hazard as soon as it breaks its casing. It's clear from the link that the energy is generated rapidly, and there can be plenty left after the battery is breached.

Read Silverstein's quote in context:
"I remember getting a call from the fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, 'We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.' And they made that decision to pull and then we watched the building collapse."
Which is more logical - we've had a terrible loss of life, let's get the firefighters out before any more are killed - or - we've had a terrible loss of life, let's blow up the building? The second is a complete non-sequitur. Also note "they made that decision" - it was a firefighters' decision. They would certainly be in a position to pull their people back, but would the firefighters know how to blow up a building?

This has all been covered over and over again in this thread. How about looking at the evidence that doesn't support CD? No explosives residues or signs of explosive damage found by any of the thousands of people who worked at the site, no evidence of anyone in the building noticing unusual activity which could be connected with placing explosives - an activity which would have taken months, no loud noises or seismic records that correspond with the start of the collapse, no plausible theory of how you get the charges to work in the damaged and burning building, the tower collapses looking nothing like any previous CD, WTC7 penthouse collapse unlike any CD.

On the contrary, I do question that it could be done, see above.

Make up your mind. First you argue that all fires in steel-framed buildings should have the same outcome, now you show two instances which don't.

You have repeatedly dismissed my arguments on the basis that I am not a structural engineer. You now have the opportunity to argue with a real structural engineer. Why don't you?

I didn't have time to check the NIST report when I made my original reply, when I'd checked I did the edit.

As I read it, in the earlier chapter they used Case A because with the restricted structural model used at that point Case B didn't give a solution. With the full model of Chapter 8, Case B now worked. Case B is clearly not the "furthest from observable truth" because it predicted the exit hole in the south wall while Case A didn't. Case B also gave a better match to the observed bowing of the south wall.
Remember what the basic difference between the cases is: aircraft impact speed. This was difficult to measure, so they picked the best guess as Case A and the highest likely value as Case B. Note that the lowest likely value gave results that were a poor match for the observations - this was the one that was "furthest from observable truth" and it was not considered further. All the evidence points to the actual speed being intermediate between Case A and Case B.

See above for the truth, rather than your quibbles.

I never claimed to have read all 10000 pages, but then I wasn't the one claiming the data was suspiciously absent. Your shifting of the goal posts is noted, as you were clearly just asking for the core load distribution:
"Last chance to answer what should be a very simple question - which of the core columns exactly were carrying this additional 1% and how was the load divided between them?"

Don’t start misrepresenting my logic again or… or I will have to say… on your logic a bomb has an infinite blast field! I would say that a bomb’s energy is most focussed at the epicentre of the blast and dissipates as it moves outward – thus why they have a limited radius and it is better to be standing as far away as possible! The energy is released quickly but it doesn’t increase after it ‘breaks its casing’.

Why are we talking about bombs anyway? A battery exploding is hardly a ‘bomb’. And even if it was, generally the main destructive force of a bomb is from shrapnel and the pressure blast; not heat. In a conventional bomb blast, it is unlikely any significant or even noticeable amount of metal will be made molten, never mind a large quantity holding its temperature at 1,000^oC! That is unless, as well as shorting and creating ‘unimaginable thermal effects’, the batteries also acted as shaped charges.

Well, you have mentioned lava, lead, furnaces, aluminium and now bombs… when does this battery theory start making sense? No wait, I’m sure you will tell me it all makes perfect sense. What I mean is, can you explain the specific process of events in real terms of how you think a battery and office fires can raise and sustain lead/aluminium temperatures to 1,000^oC?

Just saying, “the batteries got hot”, which is pretty much all the argument has amounted to so far, is nowhere near good enough. Do you think the energy of the shorted battery was released internally or externally? Did the batteries in the UPS room explode one at a time or altogether in your opinion? How do you think the energy/heat transfer was focussed on the metal? By how much and for how long do you believe this raised the temperature of the fire and/or metal? Just for some examples.

Specific, so there is a theory instead of a badly thought out fairytale.

The context of the peculiar wording used above doesn’t change whether in it’s original quote or not. If you want to talk about Silverstein in full context though, don’t forget to keep in mind these points we have been over: -

• Silverstein won the lease for the Twin Towers only 6 weeks prior 9/11
  
• Silverstein attempted to claim double the insurance payout he was due
  
• All of the insurance award has not been put back into rebuilding
  
• Prominent individuals have described Silverstein as having a “profit motive”
  
• Silverstein has strong Israeli connections

The last point also calls for bringing the whole Israeli 9/11 connection into context, but that is for another time.



Despite suggesting “they” made the decision to “pull”, Silverstein does first say, “I said, you know, we have had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.”

Neither case you mention seems wholly logical, which is exactly why Silverstein’s comment and wording is so peculiar. Why stand back and let a building burn out of control rather than fight the fire safely from a distance? And what do firefighting decisions have to do with Silverstein anyway? It also doesn’t seem logical to “pull” firefighters, considering there didn’t seem to be any firefighting action at WTC7: -

• "There was no firefighting in WTC 7," - Popular Mechanics... how ironic.
  
  
• "No manual firefighting actions were taken by FDNY." - FEMA Report

Where “pull” as in controlled demolition would make sense in Silverstein’s quote is if someone on the scene indicated to him that the building was unstable and that taking the structure down in a controlled manner would be safer. Alternatively, the “pull” comment also makes sense if Silverstein knew in advance of the controlled demolition, panicked after the event and used the wording to cover his back.



Wow, the ignorance you are showing is astounding, considering I have given in detail responses to all the above. Why don’t you stop forgetting/mental blocking/ignoring the reasons I give and answer these questions: -

1. How could explosive residues be found without running tests for this on the steelwork?
2. How would explosive damage be noticeable amongst the pulverised and wrecked debris pile?
3. What ‘should’ have been noticed of covert placement of demolition/thermite charges?
4. Why would thermite cause loud noises or seismic readings?
5. Why would explosive/thermite charges not work in the areas not impacted/on fire?
6. What ‘should’ a controlled demolition of the Towers, starting from the impact floors, have looked like?
7. Why is it imperative to a WTC7 controlled demolition that the penthouse shouldn’t go first?

You think fires can weaken the WTC steel to collapse but demolition charges could not? I’m having trouble taking you seriously.



No no no, you are getting my argument wrong again. You earlier asked, “Do all buildings that catch fire end up like Windsor?” To which I replied, “severe distortion of steelwork in the area of collapse and all steelwork that weakens due to heating to the point of collapse should end up similar to the Windsor building.”

Now, why do I have to put everything to you three times to get a response?...

First, note NIST’s Tower fire models where maximum temperatures rise, peak and drop within 1-2 hour timeframes in the open office areas. Keeping that in mind, obviously if column 79 was weakened in WTC7 due to 3 hours plus of severe fire, there must have been a mighty fuel source other than office contents and dissimilar to that in the Towers. What do you suggest this was?

Second, the First Interstate Bank fire burned for over 4 hours, gutting 4 floors – why no severe structural damage/weakening there?



I don’t dismiss your arguments at all – I consider them, find them in dispute or faulty and give feedback as to why. Even then, none of it is on the basis that you are not a structural engineer.

I’m glad you took the time to have a look, though it is more than a little worrying you believed a false situation and held firm in that belief, accusing me of not reading the report properly before yourself checking the facts.



I don’t find the bowing columns to be significant at all in validating either model as we cannot see inside the Towers to know for sure why the bowing occurred. I also find the north impact hole to be a more reliable indicator of the models’ validity than the south exit hole - in fact, NIST themselves say the impact hole is the most significant of all observable factors… then strangely go on to ignore their own advice.

The significant differences between Case A & B are far more than you mention above. As well as aircraft speed, increases were made to the aircraft weight and failure strain with a reduction to the Tower’s weight and failure strain. I mean come on, one thing at a time NIST! All in all the combined alterations producing the severe case created conditions far from what was most expected.

Looking at the base Case A, you know, it shows that debris had passed through the core and wasn’t far from puncturing the south wall at all. Was it necessary for NIST to make so many and such severe alterations for the debris to exit the south wall? It doesn’t seem so.

Speaking of variations to computer models, I should just add here that is part of my problem with them – parameters are always initially human input. The impact models prove again that a computer calculating to fixed laws can still give very different results due to human inclination.



Ultimately I agree with you here – I think the impact was between Case A & B. As said above though, from observable evidence, much closer to Case A. It is irrelevant though – we both agree the impact damage was somewhere between cases. Therefore you see that straight out usage of Case B for the collapse analysis was not a reflection of reality?



Well I am impressed – you continuously misrepresent me until the time it suits and you then pull out a spot on quote!

There are a few things throwing me off with the load/force distribution figures. I wonder if you can help with the first, being the technical sort. In NCSTAR1-6, for WTC1 all values are given as “demand-to-capacity ratio for axial force” (see page 241 on) but for WTC2 all values are given as “column loads (kip)” (see page 259 on). No, I plain can’t be bothered to ask NIST. Just wondered if you or anyone have any suggestions why the different measures between Towers?

That is not what I said. You claimed that once the battery was breached, it had no energy left over for further heating things up. This is exactly equivalent to saying that once a bomb breaks its casing, it has no energy left over to propel a blast wave. No-one is claiming the energy was infinite, just that there was a lot more than you admit.

The battery hazard link makes it perfectly clear that a shorted battery can have very spectacular consequences. Just read that link again, with my emphasis added:
"What happens if a fully charged lead-acid battery cell is shorted? Hopefully the device shorting the battery becomes hot and melts or vaporizes and clears the short. In large installations, there is enough energy available to vaporize copper buss bars and other circuitry. Vaporizing copper has the same expansion rate as exploding dynamite.
If a shorted battery cell does not clear the external short, the electrical connection between the battery terminals allows for a very rapid chemical reaction as the sulfuric acid converts the lead and lead dioxide to lead sulfate. Now the electrical energy is not dissipated externally, but internally in the form of heat. The resulting temperature rise inside the battery cell literally destroys the cell and actually may vaporize the battery materials including the electrolyte and lead."

There was a whole room full of such batteries just where the molten cascade originated. How anyone can deny a link is beyond me.

You've made a number of claims there that appear to conflict with the facts:
http://wtc7lies.googlepages.com/larrysilve...profitmotive%3F

There are plenty of accounts of what the firefighters had to face at WTC7:
http://wtc7lies.googlepages.com/eyewitness...untsofwtc7fires
http://wtc7lies.googlepages.com/eyewitness...thdrawalfromwtc
In the circumstances, how exactly should they have fought the fire safely from a distance?

"Pull" is used in CD to mean pulling a building down with cables, not bringing it down with explosives

Steven Jones claims to have analysed debris from the towers, why can't he find anything?
If you think people can install charges each massing hundreds of kilos at lots of locations in an occupied building without anyone at all noticing, you have a better imagination that me. Nothing moved, no fixtures damaged, no fresh paint or plaster? To use your word, this is a real fairystory.
Make up your mind, do you have explosives there or not? They were certainly part of your last theory.
A CD starts with explosions, lots of them, producing acoustic and seismic traces. It does not start with bowing columns.
The penthouse makes it look unlike any previous CD. This is important because you are arguing "looks like a CD means is a CD". Anything that doesn't look like a CD immediately undermines this argument.

Because of the problem of setting up the occupied buildings.

So only some aspects should be similar? Which and why?

WTC7 appears to have had pressurised diesel fuel lines running through it to feed emergency generators. One of those could certainly fuel a fire over a long period. However, I haven't been able to find much detail on the locations.
I still don't see why, because a fire behaves in one way in one building, it should behave in the same way in another. All these buildings had different structures, different fires, different firefighting opportunities. Why should they behave in the same way?

Very funny. Perhaps I could remind you of your post #451, among others.
"there are bricklayers with more specific building construction qualifications than you have and bin men with as much hands on experience of steel framed structures."
If that's not trying to undermine me because I'm not a structural engineer, what is?
Now we have a real structural engineer with plenty of qualifications and experience coming up with a similar theory to mine. He has the detailed model that I don't. You want the details, so you'll ask me, but you won't ask him.

I admit I didn't read far enough, this shows the danger of picking quotes at random from such a huge document. Perhaps you could also learn from this.

The fact that the NIST theory has a structural model that gives a simple explanation for the bowing, while the CD theory has difficulty explaining bowing at all, may be why you "don’t find the bowing columns to be significant". It is all a part of your confirmation bias.

They started with three cases and kept with them. They didn't try lots of intermediate cases, and you would have complained like anything if they had, see your following quote.

You criticise for tailoring the model to the evidence and you criticise for not doing so.

So you withdraw all those accusations about the "furthest from observable truth"? Using Case B because it matches the bowing seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Perhaps different teams did the two calculations and the fact that they presented their graphical data in different ways wasn't noticed, or only noticed after the report had been finished. The WTC1 section certainly gives loads in kips in the text, so you could probably work out the conversion. In any case, it is plain from the diagrams that what I've been saying all along about load re-distribution being a long way from uniform is correct.

I said once a battery circuit is broken it will cease to generate further energy and will if anything cool down.



Surely you realise that just because vaporizing copper may have the same expansion rate as dynamite it does not mean the small copper elements in a battery or circuit actually have the same energy potential as dynamite. The same is true of other small elements that may vaporize, there is nothing to support enough energy being generated to heat a large quantity of metal to 1,000^oC.

A battery just isn’t a bomb or designed to explode. I’ve heard of petrol bombs, pipe bombs, car bombs… why do we never hear of battery bombs? According to you, they would be quite effective - exploding like dynamite and flinging molten metal everywhere. The fact is that a battery may catch fire, crackle a bit, go pop, but it isn’t as effective as you are trying to sell.



So I ask for specific and this is what you come up with? If you want to do your ‘theory’ a favour – go back, answer the questions I asked and list the exact steps you believe led to the molten metal.

The link does not contest any of the facts I posted. And it is quite deceptive, doing the math to show Silverstein was out of pocket, before adding at the end, nearly as an afterthought, that the Port Authority stumped up over $400m toward funding of the new WTC7.

These are the facts of the WTC7 insurance claim and rebuild: -

Insurance award: $861m
Rebuild funded by Silverstein: $225m
Mortgage owed on original WTC7: $489m

That says to me, not only did Silverstein make a $147m profit, but he had a brand new WTC7 and the mortgage on the building fully paid off.

As for having a “profit motive”, the silly deceitful little wtc7lies article is overridden by the news article here quoting some prominent individuals’ views on Silverstein: -

• According to the Empire State Development Corporation, Silverstein came to the table with a last-minute offer that was both “unexpected and unacceptable.”
  
  
• The Port Authority called Silverstein’s last-minute proposal “outrageous.”
  
  
• "It was clearly an indication of the greed involved and not really in the public interest," said Port Authority Vice Chairman Charles Gargano.
  
  
• "This rebuilding project is unlike any other in the history of New York City and our nation, and must be treated as such,” said Pataki. “Our ardent desire to move forward expeditiously must not be used as leverage by Larry Silverstein for his financial demands."
  
  
• “Larry Silverstein is a fine developer and a good New Yorker, but he must now put aside his individual profit motive,” added Senator Charles Schumer.

We have been over all this previously in the thread flyingswan – do try to retain the information this time.



Again, the links do not contest that there was no real firefighting action to “pull” from WTC7. There is an interesting quote within though: -

“We were concerned that the fires on several floors and the missing steel would result in the building collapsing. So for the next five or six hours we kept firefighters from working anywhere near that building” - Chief Frank Fellini

Five or six hours from collapse takes the time back to early as 11:20am. This seems around the earliest time rescue teams could move in on WTC7, with the North Tower collapsing at 10:28am and having to wait for the dust cloud to settle. This would mean almost instantly someone on the scene knowing that WTC7 was to collapse. How could they possibly know so early, without assessment of the structure, unless for someone having prior knowledge? The official account contradicts Fellini’s claim, indicating that instability wasn’t noticed until approximately 2:00pm.



That’s a joke right? Steven Jones got his hands on one small bit of steel and some dust. I will ask again - How could explosive residues be found without running tests for this on the steelwork?

You missed the question - How would explosive damage be noticeable amongst the pulverised and wrecked debris pile?


Why is it so amazing that ‘maintenance’ teams could move explosive/thermite units at night or weekends from the basement car parks through the service elevators/areas? Remember, it’s quite possible we have sections of WTC security in on the job.


As stated numerous times before – the collapse began with thermite charges. No one (except you it seems) is really so stupid as to start a covert demolition with a string of explosions.

You missed the question - Why would explosive/thermite charges not work in the areas not impacted/on fire?

You missed the question - What ‘should’ a controlled demolition of the Towers, starting from the impact floors, have looked like?


I thought we had got over this issue – this was not a conventional controlled demolition and therefore will not look identical to such. I asked - Why is it imperative to a WTC7 controlled demolition that the penthouse shouldn’t go first?



As I have said, where areas of steel structures weaken to the point of collapse, there should be severe distortion of the steelwork. This is apparent in the Madrid Building where partial collapse occurs but not in the Towers where complete collapse occurs.



I would have thought the diesel storage tanks, lines and areas they covered would be fireproofed. I don’t see how an office fire could rupture the lines.



I felt you referred to yourself as an ‘engineer’ in a misleading way. I was showing you have no more expertise on the subject than most other people.

No, it is that without being able to see inside the Towers we cannot know why the south wall was bowing. Perhaps the weakening of core columns on the south side through use of explosive/thermite charges, shifted loads onto the south perimeter causing its bowing.



No, it is quite alright to tailor a model to match evidence – something NIST fail to do.



No, between Case A & B, the latter is furthest from the truth.

I said - we both agree the impact damage was somewhere between cases. Therefore you see that straight out usage of Case B for the collapse analysis was not a reflection of reality? What is your problem with confirming this? Are you trying to hide the truth or does it just scare you too much to admit? Case B was not the reality of the situation, was it?



I guess it would follow with everything else that NIST just weren’t consistent with the data.

It all depends on how much energy is produced before the battery breaks. You appear to think this is only enough to just break the casing, but as with my bomb analogy, it can be a lot more.

A busbar isn't a "small copper element", it's a substantial piece of metal. Vapourising one implies a lot of energy.

Battery explosions are not something I've invented, they are engineering facts. Batteries are energy storage devices, and shorting one releases the energy rapidly: here's another link:
http://www.batterycare.co.uk/techdocs/Safety%20Issues.pdf
"Connecting the two posts together on one battery, or the wrong posts together on multiple batteries, can cause a short circuit. A short circuit in a battery causes it to try to discharge completely, very quickly. These high current levels can cause serious burns, can cause the battery to rupture or explode, causing severe injury, and possibly death."
and
"If there is a degradation or failure in the ventilation of the battery area, a build up of hydrogen (a highly volatile gas) could occur. If this situation is allowed to persist there is a risk of explosion."

If battery explosions can vapourise metal, why do you have such problems with metal being merely molten?
I would have thought the process was obvious: impact damage dislodges a metal component which falls and shorts one or more batteries, battery explodes, more damage, more shorts, hydrogen released, more explosions, and all in a limited enclosure.

The 400 million was a loan, not a gift – do try to retain the information this time. Now do your maths again.

With that huge hole in the south face, I expect it looked pretty unsafe to start with. Why would they go in before the assessment of the structure?

How about the characteristic smell? Anyone of the workers at the site who had CD experience should have picked that up.
NIST didn't test because by that time any engineer could see that explosives weren't involved.
However, the steel was tested in lots of different ways - the sulphur corrosion piece was something unusual picked out for chemical analysis.

There were plenty of engineers all over that site during the clean-up. If the damage was there, it would have been noticed.

Ah, the old ones are the best. If you have any difficulty with a scenario, add more conspirators.

Oh, I thought that was the standard conspiracy theory, with thermite an option?

As I under