Glasgow tower block to shed light on 9/11 fire

[Buttercup McToots]

http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=1068572006

Exerpt:
Sun 23 Jul 2006

Glasgow tower block to shed light on 9/11 fire
NICHOLAS CHRISTIAN

A PROFESSOR of engineering is to destroy a Glasgow tower block in an effort to understand why the Twin Towers collapsed in the 9/11 attacks. Jose Torero, Professor of Fire Safety Engineering at Edinburgh University, will set the disused building in the east end of Glasgow alight and study the effects.

He and his team will fill a room in the tower with hundreds of pounds of sophisticated equipment, including heat and light sensors, along with nine miles of cable in an effort to examine the effects of a raging fire in a multi-story tower block. His colleagues will also be able to open and close windows while the fire is raging in order to study the behaviour of the blaze.

The disused tower block is at Millerfield Place in the Dalmarnock area of Glasgow. It was built in 1964 but has lain disused for more than a decade. The Peruvian-born academic is one of a number of experts across the world who believes that the Twin Towers should have stayed up after they were hit by hijacked airliners on September 11 2001.

Torero believes that by studying why the buildings did collapse, future structures can be made safer. He said: "Those buildings should have withstood burnout. From my perspective, those buildings were designed to last structurally for between three to four hours, enough time to get everyone out who had survived. At least that's what you expect."

[AndyA]

1. This should be interesting.

If the building is of similar construction, it could prove/disprove a few theories as to what really happened. I was in construction and development for many years, and I've never seen buildings come down the way the WTC towers came down, unless they were intentionally imploded.

Metal beams don't crumble in that manner, and I would have expected large pieces of the buildings to fall sideways, which didn't really happen.

I think this may have been one of the biggest lies ever told to the American people by the Bush Gestapo.

[QuettaKid]

3. MIHOP. nt.

.

[Warpy]

5. "Similar construction"

Unfortunately, the two towers were unique and their construction made them vulnerable to collapse.

They may get some insight into what happened to #7, though. Nobody has ever explained why that one vertical support failed.

[AndyA]

10. I think the telling fact will be what happens to the metal under intense

fire. I haven't had a chance to see if there's any details about the construction of the building on the Internet, but if it has metal support beams that should be enough for comparison. I'm fairly certain the construction is similar, it would make no sense to test using a totally different type of construction.

The big explanation with the WTC was that due to high temperatures, the metal beams and supports failed. Anyone who has ever seen a high rise building with metal support beams on fire knows that this does not happen. There is simply not enough heat generated for a long enough period of time. Even the jet fuel doesn't create temperatures that high, or of a long enough duration, to cause this.

It should be interesting to see what the outcome is.

[patcox2]

13. You wrongly assume structural failure of the main columns.

The main columns of the WTC did not fail. They did not melt or warp or weaken significantly.

[AndyA]

14. I am not wrongly assuming anything. I am going by what the official

excuse was.

I have not assumed anything about the WTC collapse, in fact I am still questioning virtually everything that's been said about it on an official basis.

What do you believe happened to the columns? And why do you believe it?

[patcox2]

21. The columns were only stable when braced by internal structure.

The actual failures which produced the collapse occurred where the quite small trusses which held up the floors were bolted to the columns with a small bolt. The trusses were the kind of ceiling trusses you see if you look up in a warhouse store, made of thin plate and rod.

The main support columns fell because they were unstable when not held in shape by the floors.

The main support columns fractured into enormous slabs, which were plainly visible in the wreckage, and in fact some areas of the outer strucure almost 200 feet tall remained standing.

[mogster]

2. Remember the Madrid fire

It stood burning all night.






Soem floors collapsed, but it still stood.

[adriennui]

8. the height of the WTC

was the main factor. taller buildings are more vulnerable to collapse, in addition to the heat and where on the buildings the plane hit. laws of physics.

[mogster]

9. OK, I'm not gonna debate this

People may think what the will, lol.

I'm just reacting to the use of the words 'conspiracy theories'. It hampers the information flow, and 911 WAS the pretext for .... almost everything we now know. That justifies questioning, and when the authorities holds back evidence that might or might not prove them/MIHOP/LIHOP right/wrong, I reserve my right to be peckish about it :-)

[Gatchaman]

4. conspiracy theories

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=911_morons

[Lerkfish]

6. coincidence theories

for 9/11 NOT to have been at least LIHOP requires the ability to believe an astounding number of simulatneous coincidences occurred on one day that resulted in a successful terror attack.

[patcox2]

12. Your birth, your existence, also required an astonishing number of

"coincidences" to occur. If your grandparents hadn't met, if they hadn't been in a good mood the day they had sex and fertilized the particular eggs that became your parents, etc. and on and on.

Mathematically, it can be proven that you do not exist, because obviously it is impossible that all the circumstances surrounding your existence to come into being in the the way they did.

In short, you reasoning is based on a well known and recognized logical fallacy. Looking backwards, everything looks impossible.

[Minstrel Boy]

15. The six coincident wargames on September 11

sure makes looking backwards quite the trip.

Remember the hijacked planes' transponders were switched off? What was the value-added benefit for the 9/11 hijackers in turning off their transponder signals? The planes remained visible to radar; the transponders merely ID'd the flights. And yet the transponders of all four flights were switched off. What was gained?

One exercise was called "Vigilant Guardian": the live-fly simulation of hijackings in the US Northeast staged by the Joint Chiefs and NORAD the very morning of the attacks. (Health advisory to coincidentalists: chew carefully before digesting.)

At one time on 9/11, as many as 22 aircraft appeared to be hijacked. Suddenly, the virtue of switching off the transponders becomes evident. With loss of transponder signals the planes became bogies, and discriminating real from simulated hijackings became next to impossible.

This confusion compounded the paralysis already introduced to the system by drawing most of the Eastern seaboard's combat-ready interceptors into Northern Canada for the wargame "Northern Vigilence," and changing the standing orders for a shootdown in June 2001 by removing the discretion of field commanders and placing it solely in the hands of the Secretary of Defense.

And how fortunate that FEMA really did arrive a day early in NYC, for a huge drill in lower Manhattan called Tripod II, that brought into the vicinity of the WTC more emergency materiel than was already on hand in WTC 7.

I could go on and on, but if this doesn't make you at least intellectually curious, there's not much point.

[hack89]

25. A few points ...

1. When the transponders were turned off they were not visible the ATCs. The ATC do not see the actual radar returns - all they see is "processed video", which is computer generated symbology that gets all its information from the transponder. No transponder means no symbol means the ATC doesn't know where the plane is. They turned off the transponders to hide their location.

2. The east coast was not stripped of interceptors. First off, there were only 14 armed fighters at 7 bases standing strip alert. They were not effected by the exercise. Secondly, just how many fighters were sent to Alaska? No one every seems able to answer this simple question so how can you say there was not adequate protection?

3. Where is the evidence that Vigilant Guardian was a live fly exercise. I googled it and apart from CT sites couldn't find any real proof. I'm not saying it doesn't exist but was hoping you could help me out.

[BuddyYoung]

26. Another CT'er message, pretending not to know what CT means.

A conspiracy only requires two people. Are you trying to fool people into thinking that 911 wasn't a conspiracy? I'm pretty sure you know that it was a conspiracy and that Osama was made the scapegoat for it.

[hack89]

27. No - I am questioning his "facts"

why are you trying to deflect attention from some hard questions?

[BuddyYoung]

28. Here's one you're ignoring, and doing so distorts whatever "facts" you

are trying to spin. It's your selective way of using "CTer", trying to make it seem as though YOU are aren't also a "CTer". Face it, "hack89", YOU ARE A CT'er. A conspiracist. Unfortunately, the conspiracy theory YOU support has no basis for its components. Worse than not having any credible evidence in support of it is the huge number of questions and evidence that question the very basis of the conspiracy theory you support...and neither you nor any of your fellow travelers have answered them, because you can't, because there are no answers, because the conspiracy theory you support is a fairy tale. So, to be accurate, what someone like that is, is a FT'er.

[hack89]

30. You don't seem to understand the problem.

It is a two stage process:

1. You prove the official story wrong.
2. You prove your particular CT right.

You can poke all the holes you want to in the official story - I have never said that there weren't problems and errors in the investigation and reports. But proving that there are problems with the official story does not mean that your CT is automatically right.

Both the official story and your CT could both be absolute nonsense. You still have to prove your case.

In this particular case, his CT was built on untruths and unsupported opinion - whether the official story is right or not is completely irrelevant to that simple fact.

So stop attacking what you think I believe and instead prove your case.

[BuddyYoung]

31. Posts like that are intellectually dishonest & very disrespectful to DUers

Your posts defend and promote a Conspiracy Theory and whenever you use a label like "CT" to denigrate people who support a different CT than the one you're here as an apoloigst for - whenever you do that to people whose ONLY agenda is to find out the truth and discuss it's implications, it makes people that much more sure that the OCT really is total BS, cheap propaganda, and indefensible.

[greyl]

34. Posts like that illustrate the fallacies of "invincible ignorance"

and "ad hominem" to name just two.

www.philosophicalsociety.com/Logical%20Fallacies.htm

[mirandapriestly]

37. ad hominem is your middle name.eom

[hack89]

41. Ok - lets have a thread that never mentions the OCT

where we will just discuss the actual evidence that proves your theories. Why don't you start with WTC CD - if you mention the OCT and NIST, it can only be to introduce a detail of your theory. Why don't you start with a basic outline of number and types of explosives, where they were located, how they were installed, how long did it take to install.

Because you see Buddy, after years, the "911 truth" movement can't answer basic questions like this. They make claims after claim as they endlessly pick apart the minutia yet seem completely unable to step back, put it all together, and answer some basic questions. Perhaps you can give it a shot.

[mirandapriestly]

40. I've never seen you prove anything

or contribute any ideas of your own. Anyone can go from post to post telling people to "prove it", that's easy, why don't you put yourself on the line with what you believe? I'll bet it would be pretty damn funny and I bet you couldn't prove it.

[hack89]

42. Are you winding up for another chorus of ...

"paid government shill"? Because we all know that's where your "logic" always seems to end up at.

I notice that you, like everyone else, is actually ignoring the issues I bring up in my post. Care to take a shot at actually answering them?

[treestar]

19. But there is some human behavior involved there

The melting point of a material does not vary depending on the metal's mood or some sort of subjective preference like the one grandpa had for grandma.

[mrgerbik]

35. The idea of comparing

the almost immeasurable ebb and flow of human thought, reasoning and mood that would allow two people of disparate poles of thought and physical space to meet and later rear a child in comparison to the few very condensed occurrences of 9/11 is a weak argument of logical fallacy.

You are comparing the thousands of occurrences through the span of a lifetime to a few incidences in one day as thou they somehow deserve the same calculation.

Is this not a logical fallacy in itself?

[mogster]

7. Are you familiar with the expression 'Bulgarian Umbrella'?

Imagine somebody telling you this story prior to the facts being uncovered. Would you have believed it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_umbrella

[mirandapriestly]

39. Good point

Many perfectly plausible scenario's are ridiculed here all the time.

[ramblin_dave]

11. Maybe Dylan Avery is still alive because he serves

a useful purpose. So much of "Loose Change" is easily debunkable that any clues to a real conspiracy will be discredited and not investigated further. It will all be written off as nutty.

[Minstrel Boy]

16. agreed

It's shiny and stupid and easily debunked. It makes a wonderful strawman.

[mirandapriestly]

24. So that 's how you make your decisions?

According to that site:

Dylan Avery is alive therefore his movie is bunk.
The guy who thinks that a refolded dollar bill represents the world trade center on fire is silly, so therefore ALL 911 skeptics are silly.

Guess what? People ARE easily fooled, but it's by guys like this, not by those asking questions about 9-11

[treestar]

17. The melting argument does not work for me

They will always claim (those amateur scientiests who pretend to understand why the towers failed) that the fire "weakened" the columns. But the problem is that the fire does not burn at the melting point of the material the columns were made of. The argument is like saying a snowman starts to weaken before it is 32 degrees. Whereas 32 degrees is where they start to weaken.

Also that the snow in big piles hangs around longer. The larger the mass, the longer it takes to melt it. Snow piles hang around in parking lots, if they are large enough, when it has been over 32 degrees for several days.

The melting point is the point where the metal starts to be affected. It starts to weaken then. The melting point is the same no matter how large the mass of the material. In fact it would take longer to weaken the bigger it was.

[Carefulplease]

29. Steel melts around 1500C but weakens significantly at 600C

Why do you compare steel to ice and not to wax? Many materials soften progressively at much lower temperatures than their melting point.

http://www.architectureweek.com/2001/1017/news_1-2.html

In the range of 900 to 1100 degrees Fahrenheit (500 to 600 degrees Centigrade), structural steel loses about half its tensile strength, and so begins to deform and buckle under loads. At 1400 degrees Fahrenheit (800 Centigrade), only about 10-20% of the strength of steel remains. The actual melting point of steels is nearly twice as hot, at temperatures difficult to reach outside the specialized conditions of a foundry or forge.

[Grateful for Hope]

32. Really so?

Hey, Sir Isaac Newton....do your stuff!

[Carefulplease]

33. Did you disagree with something? n/t

[mirandapriestly]

38. That Isaac newton avator is too much

Really, lared could do better than that couldn't s/he?

[Bolo Boffin]

43. Are you saying that LARED and CarefulPlease are the same person?

Tell you what, I'll put together evidence about a poster here who has had multiple identities tombstoned and yet still posts, and you do the same on LARED and CarefulPlease.

We'll see which ones survive the tests of the moderators.

[mrgerbik]

36. Your article

somehow bypasses the reality of steel buildings engineered redundancy (not to mention that the fires didn't get this hot in the first place). They have these things called "building codes" that are in place to counter effects like this.

While we're on this topic, I want to bring up an old question:

Why don't CD companies just damage a building then burn it with kerosene or diesel until it collapses, instead of all that fancy-shmancy, expensive explosive crap?


Also your use of the word "significantly" has many quantitative connotations tied to it, none of them being scientific.

[helderheid]

18. check it :)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1754611

[Buttercup McToots]

20. WOW

July 29Th?
Should be interesting...

[mirandapriestly]

23. can't wait, I'll tivo...eom

[DrDebug]

22. It has about 25 floors, so it's about 1/4 of the size of WTC

It's the ugly building in front. There were more tower blocks who already got destroyed using Controlled Demolition ;)



So we'll probably know more next week.