Pat states, "It's the usual bit of nuttery; the program leads in with a lie: 'How many buildings collapsed on 9-11 Mom? Three.' Well, three if you don't count WTC-3. And St. Nick's."
As I pointed out in a previous reply to Pat, trying to equate the destruction of the puny 4-story St. Nick's church and the damage to WTC 3 to WTC 7 is even more ludicrous today than it was when radio host Rob Breakenridge did it in April of 2008, because the August 2008 government report on WTC 7, oddly enough, put the final nail in this type of talking point when it stated that Building 7 was "the first known instance of fire causing the total collapse of a tall building." That being said, I will at least give Pat credit for being less ludicrous than "debunkers" who tried to use the partial collapse a freeway for a comparison.
Pat states, "Tony Szamboti chips in (breathlessly--the guy sounds like he's just finished the mile run) to tell us fire can't melt steel. Oh, except for in a few cases. Left unsaid, of course, by this engineer is that fire doesn't have to melt steel for the metal to lose its load-bearing capacity.
I couldn't hear it, but if Szamboti is out of breath I'm sure it's from the exhaustion of debunking your ilk into silence. The few cases where fire can melt steel Szamboti was referring to were in controlled circumstances such as a blast furnace. Also, when fires are out in the open with plenty of oxygen fueling them, such as with the lame experiments conducted on the National Geographic 9/11 program, this can be accomplished, but when Underwriters Labs created full scale models of the WTC floor sections and tested them in hotter and longer fires they didn't collapse.
As I wrote in another previous reply to Pat on the matter:
Pat Curley of the Screw Loose Change blog says, (to 9/11 activist Jeff Hill) "Here's a clue for
Jeff: Molten metal does not equal molten steel."
Here's a clue for Pat: This does equal molten steel, "In what The New York Times dubbed as 'perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation,' Appendix C of the WTC Building Performance Study documented 'intergranular melting capable of turning a solid steel girder into Swiss cheese.'"
Appendix C states, "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."
As 911research.wtc7.net points out, "The 'deep mystery' of the melted steel may be yielding its secrets to investigators not beholden to the federal government. Professor Steven Jones has pointed out that the severe corrosion, intergranular melting, and abundance of sulfur are consistent with the theory of thermite arson."
Pat adds in an update, "Some particularly moronic Truthers want to talk about the thermal images taken by NASA on 9/16/01. They're archived here, on Jim Hoffman's site. Notice the temperatures recorded go as high as 1377 degrees fahrenheit. Which is about half the temperature required to melt steel."
"All morons hate it when you call them a moron."
J. D. Salinger
Well I'm sure these truthers could care less if Pat goes around calling them moronic, but when we put the boot on the other foot ... hey Pat, what do you think of these FACTS, moron?
The images below represent surface temperatures, the 'optical depth' is at the most a few millimeters. (ACS919)
The debris pile at Ground Zero was always tremendously hot. Thermal measurements taken by helicopter each day showed underground temperatures ranging from 400ºF to more than 2,800ºF. asse.org, May issue 2002 cached copySince the time I posted the above reply, civil engineer Jon Cole conducted an experiment where he proved wrong the explanations offered by "debunkers" for the melted and corroded steel from WTC 7. Pat may not be impressed with the experiment, but others are, and that includes debunkers.
Pat states, "These morons are like a broken record."
I sure as hell feel like one! A broken record that is. ;)
