Denier Turns Debunker
Our new buddy JA Stewart, who was a 9-11 Denier from about February to November of this year until he discovered the JREF Forums, has started a debunking blog.
Then I found the James Randi Educational Foundation. Over on the Loose Change message boards, this place is deemed as full of trolls, a stupid place, and is used as an insult to people: "Go back to JREF". Pretty much as soon as I saw that they had completely debunked all the 9/11 conspiracy claims, I begun worry regarding the Conspiracy Theory, and after reading many, threads, documents and websites, I reached the conclusion that I was being an idiot.
Not an easy thing to admit, but he's an honest truth-seeker, and he eventually found what he was looking for.
posted by Pat @ 8:13 AM
57 comments
57 Comments:
I respect everyone's right to have their belief's and form their own opinions, however misguided.
A real investigation could bring forward the truth laid bare.
As you know, that's what I'm supporting.
chf,
I've been quite clear and specific. I don't support an overthrow of the American govt., violent or peaceful, federal, state, or local.
Within that context, I am left to support the legitimate sanctioned investigative and prosecutorial arms in doing their job.
I, like a huge number of Americans, believe certain aspects of the 9/11 investigation have been compromised. I commenting here and elsewhere to bring these some of the more outrageous details to light and push for the system to work.
BG:
The problem with the truth movement, is they cry foul, but propose no solution.
Wanting another investigation...well who is going to pay for it? Tax payers. Well who controls the taxes? Government. Well who is it you do not want involved in the investigation...govt.
So now what?
Well why not get one of the wealthy wingnuts like Jimmy Walters to fund an independent investigation? He has lots of money.
It is not enough to say "bad government" or "bad commission" you have to provide a solution to the problem. If there are questions you want answered, don't sit around whining for the answers, go out and get them.
TAM
You guys are wearing me out. Congrats.
I asking for legitimate Govt. behavior consistent with the Oath of Office from the Pres. on down. I dont' think that it is outrageous to request. It's our birthright to demand.
Given when I believe is a dismal failure of our Govt to perform legally , morally, and responsively, I support all of you who want to have a libertarian tilt toward small, limited govt.
I realize that "lower taxes" and a good economic climate may be serving many of you well, but is there any doubt that deficit spending and whole sale corruption weakens our Nation?
Guys, BG is on a quest to save the world and protect lots of puppies or something. Don't be a buzz kill.
The call goes out for experts.
Who would you suggest?
I'm not trying to avoid your question, honestly I'm not.
I realize that there may be sometimes in history where a "blue-ribbon" panel or a panel of experts should be convened. I'm not against that.
In the case of 9/11, I think doing another 9/11 Commission or Convening a panel of experts is getting the cart before the horse.
You seem to want to pigeon hole me into saying that I'm saying millions of people are corrupt. If your read Kevin Ryan's info, about his experience at UL, and his review of how the 9/11 investigations were handled, you can get a sense of there being a relatively small number of clearly corrupt individuals.
For example, the number of people who had their hands in on writing the NIST reports was tiny compared to the huge list of people that played certain roles.
You further seem to be saying that my lack of specifying what experts should be selected somehow puts the situation in a "put up or shut up" mode.
I reject your tact here.
I don't think there's any doubt that the FBI has primary jurisdiction over investigating the attack. I'm not in a position to know how, after removing Bush and Cheney, they would re-open parts of the investigation. I believe everything would start with re-opening issues in investigation, not with some high-level "expert" review.
chf,
calling me chickenshit persuades me that my approach to you should match my approach to stevew.
LOL
"You called me a bad name, so now I have an excuse not to give you some positive information."
Is your self-esteem that fragile, bg? If you're going to accuse people of mass-murder I think you're going to need some thick skin.
List of Names to Ignore at SLC Blog
Lavoisier said...
Thick Skin I have.
I don't have interest in being badgered by people who show no intention toward honest debate.
I wonder if there's anyone who thinks that the 9/11 Commission was a sham who doesn't also think the Warren Commission was one.
Bg disingenuously contends that he wants a new investigation. That's not quite right. He wants a bogus investigation with a predetermined outcome conducted by fools and fantasists whose only qualification is a hatred for America.
I have posted several quotes by demolition experts who regard the conspiracy liars' moonshine as utter rubbish. Bg apparently believes that they're missing something but he refuses to enlighten us.
C'mon, Bg, show us you're not the fraud I keep insisting you are. Tell us what the demolition experts are getting wrong. To make it easy, I'll repost the material separately.
Here it is again, bg. You can run, but you can't hide. Sooner or later, you must say something substantive.
From the Popular Mechanics book:
"His [Jones's] reasoning is that a thermite reaction with steel can produce molten metal.
Pense believes Jones is again mistaken. 'I don't know anyone else who thinks thermite reactions on steel columns could have done that.'
Richard Fruehan, professor of metallurgical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, says Jones does not provide adequate evidence to show that thermite reactions did take place. However, even if they did, that would not necessarily indicate the presence of explosives. 'The thermite could have occurred with aluminum metal and any oxide that happens to be near it. Or oxygen could react with aluminum as well. There was a lot of aluminum in the building itself--the windows, etc., plus the airplane's aluminum. That could have cause a thermite reaction and produced a small amount of molten iron.'
In any case, Mark Loizeaux, president of Controlled Demolition Inc., says Jones misunderstands the properties of explosive charges. Although these charges provide intense heat, he says, the velocity of detonation is too fast--28,000 feet per second--to melt steel. When an explosive is detonated, it cuts through steel with force; it does not burn through it with heat. He makes the analogy of a person putting his hand through a candle: He can swipe it straight through the flame quickly without getting burned. But if he holds it several inches above the flame for an extended period, he will get burned. 'The difference is the duration of the exposure,' he says, 'I can put a shaped charge on a steel column for a test shot and then walk right up and put my hand on the column. There's no heat [because it burns too fast]. Now, how do they make steel in a steel mill? They take fuel and they keep heating the iron ore or scrap steel until it melts. So, could explosives melt steel? Absolutely not. It's too fast an exposure.' "
Okay, you must think that all of these people are going wrong somewhere. What do you know that they don't? Really, at some point, you simply have to show us something. We're not interested in bullshit about PM being a gubmint agency.
What mistakes are these experts making?
Hahahaha, the dumbass actually made a list with people he is gonna ignore. ROFL!
How old were you again BG?
47?
Ans u still havent answered that simple question from CHF so i will ask you then, since chf is on your ignore list...
Please give me some names of experts or organisations who you would trust to investigate 9/11 as part of a new commission.
pomeroo said...
I don't know if Steven Jones is right about his Thermate hypothesis.
The issue as follows:
No NIST report, or Popular Mechanics Mag article, or Popular Mechancs book has explained the huge inconsistency between the govt official 9/11 story and the way the towers fell based on the pictures and video that are not challenged as bogus in any way that I'm aware of.
Gosh I have shed 3 tears LOL
One of his socalled experte Kevin Ryan
Kevin R. Ryan Terminated at Underwriters Laboratories Area Man Stirs Debate on WTC Collapse:
South Bend firm's lab director fired after questioning federal probe JOHN DOBBERSTEIN / South Bend Tribune 22nov04
SOUTH BEND - The laboratory director from a South Bend firm has been fired for attempting to cast doubt on the federal investigation into what caused the World Trade Center's twin towers to collapse on Sept. 11, 2001.
Kevin R. Ryan was terminated Tuesday from his job at Environmental Health Laboratories Inc., a subsidiary of Underwriters Laboratories Inc., the consumer-product safety testing giant.
On Nov. 11, Ryan wrote a letter to the National Institute of Standards and Technology - the agency probing the collapse - challenging the common theory that burning jet fuel weakened the steel supports holding up the 110-story skyscrapers.
Underwriters Laboratories Inc., according to Ryan, "was the company that certified the steel components used in the construction of the WTC buildings."
Ryan wrote that last year, while "requesting information," UL's chief executive officer and fire protection business manager disagreed about key issues surrounding the collapse, "except for one thing - that the samples we certified met all requirements."
UL vehemently denied last week that it ever certified the materials.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology is conducting a $16 million, two-year investigation of the collapse of the twin towers. The agency expects to issue a draft report in January, and UL has played a limited role in the investigation.
Ryan wrote that the institute's preliminary reports suggest the WTC's supports were probably exposed to fires no hotter than 500 degrees - only half the 1,100-degree temperature needed to forge steel, Ryan said. That's also much cooler, he wrote, than the 3,000 degrees needed to melt bare steel with no fire-proofing.
"This story just does not add up," Ryan wrote in his e-mail to Frank Gayle, deputy chief of the institute's metallurgy division, who is playing a prominent role in the agency investigation. "If steel from those buildings did soften or melt, I'm sure we can all agree that this was certainly not due to jet fuel fires of any kind, let alone the briefly burning fires in those towers."
He added, "Alternatively, the contention that this steel did fail at temperatures around (500 degrees) suggests that the majority of deaths on 9/11 were due to a safety-related failure. That suggestion should be of great concern to my company."
Ryan declined to comment about his letter Thursday when reached at his South Bend home.
But his allegations drew a sharp rebuke from UL, which said Ryan wrote the letter "without UL's knowledge or authorization." The company told The Tribune "there is no evidence" that any firm tested the materials used to build the towers.
"UL does not certify structural steel, such as the beams, columns and trusses used in World Trade Center," said Paul M. Baker, the company's spokesman.
Ryan was fired, Baker said, because he "expressed his own opinions as though they were institutional opinions and beliefs of UL."
If your read Kevin Ryan's info, about his experience at UL
BG, this comment is a perfect example of why nobody takes you seriously.
You stomp in here and demand that people debate you on the facts. But when pressed for evidence you puke up the name Kevin Ryan -- the water tester who got fired for publishing his opinions about fire and steel on company letterhead, and who is now busy "peer reviewing" his own articles in his own journal.
You constantly complain that people ridicule you, and won't engage you in honest debate. But if Kevin Ryan is the most recent, most credible thing you can come up with, then ridicule is all you deserve.
I'm guessing BG is hoping to come up with something you guys haven't already covered on here :)
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
I'm sorry, bg, but I simply don't believe you. Let's start with a straightforward, easily comprehended example:
The PM book shows a photo of WTC 2 (photo no. 10, between pages 42-43). "Conspiracy theorists claim that fuel from the hijacked jets didn't burn hot enough or long enough to cause structural failure. Vertical lines on this photo of WTC 2's east face indicate the original line of vertical columns, while the small perpendicular bars show an inward bowing of about 10 inches just 18 minutes after the impact of Flight 175. WTC 1's south face was bowed inward some 55 inches six minutes before collapse."
We notice that real researchers employ actual measurements in attempting to reflect reality as accurately as possible. They refrain from sharing with us the insight that their "guts" tell them that something "just isn't right." The conspiracy liars argue from near-total ignorance and expend enormous energy branding conclusions they reject for purely emotional reasons as "impossible." Their absurd, unscientific fabrications are always "indisputable," despite the hordes of real scientists and engineers who do, in fact, dispute them.
I made the offer on Smasher's blog to forward any serious question about his work to Dr. Frank Greening, who I regard as a friend. I got no takers.
I have spoken to Mike Newman of NIST several times over the phone. Do you have a specific question you'd care to ask him. Do you want to show me a specific error in the NIST report that I can pass along to him?
Why not?
I think we all know the reason. There are no inconsistencies in the NIST report. Or in the Popular Mechanics book. Or in the Protec paper. Or in Dr. Greening's work.
The list goes on.
The collapse of the WTC is not mysterious at all. It has been explained comprehensively by highly qualified researchers and you can find nothing whatever to challenge in their conclusions.
Separate Topic:
I have just been listening to Troy on Jason's Bemis radio show.
Troy, you seen like you are really looking into this. I underestimated you. I apologize.
pomeroo said...
I will be taking you up on your offer. May not be until Monday.
ok BG:
You said the main problem is that, in your opinion, the NIST/ASCE/FBI reports/info do not match what you saw on video in terms of the ubilding collapses.
ok, now you also said that it is likely that only a few at NIST were corrupt.
So of all the non-corrupt scientists in NIST, of all the non-corrupt engineers with ASCE, all of which are likely more qualified to determine the cause of building collapse, whether it be through video/photo/mathematic analysis, than you or I, why have none of them, come forward and said what you are saying. They are just as educated. Just as able to see your suggested inconsistencies between video and the reports? Why BG.
It just doesnt make sense. The fact is this...
99% of the scientific community, with the same videos and photos available to them as the general public, truther, debunkers etc.. have said that the video/photos/audio/mathematical models/official theories are all in sync...EOS.
TAM
Here's my first question to Mr. Greening and Mr. Newman:
Have they reviewed this recent document
What is their refutation?
Well i can answer one part already BG. He claims that the firefighters could have extinguished the fires if they could. Well thats kinda impossible, since there was not enough water pressure. And still he doesn't show pictures from the damage on the south side....
The Artistic Macrophage said..,
I see your argument.
I've not saying the following contradicts your claims, but I think the following should be part of the discussion:
1) When Steven Jones continued to stand up for what he considered a scientific approach to 9/11, he first was put on leave, and later he seems to have received a retirement offer that he couldn't refuse.
2) The official reason for Kevin Ryan's dismissal doesn't hold water.
I don't claim the above factors explain the whole issue.
I think an additional reason that more people aren't speaking up from the scientific community is simply a lack of many of the people giving the question a second thought.
I have included a blog post from my blog of a Civil Engineer who was palpably angry at the Structural Engineering Faculty at UT due to their silence on 9/11.
BG, from that blog i quote:
With his training as a Civil Engineer, he is attempting to "run the numbers" himself, looking particularly at the "energy balance" of whether the explanation that have been provided by NIST holds up.
So has he run the numbers himself, and if so, where are those numbers?
I've sent the link to Dr. Greening. I won't anticipate his response, but the material looks pretty primitive. The writer makes the long-debunked claim that the temperatures were too low to weaken the steel. Most liars have given up on this thoroughly exploded canard.
BG:
one of the main reasons Jones was gien the cold shoulder by his own faculty and Uni, is the LACK of scientific method and application used in his paper. If it were desigend like a scientific paper is suppose to, and carried out like one, it wouldn't have bothered them. The paper is a consipracy paper, full of conjecture and speculation based on a few inconsistencies. Now if you have any, ANY formal science training, you know that such a paper is the furthest thing from a professional scientific paper that you can get.
TAM
crungy,
You diatribe against K. Ryan adds your name to my ignore list here
TAM,
You are committing the logical fallacy of foregone conclusion or circular reasoning here.
ROFL, i made the list!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I guess he couldnt answer the same question i asked as CHF did.
So if u don't want to come upon the "list" don't ask him the next question:
Please give me some names of experts or organisations who you would trust to investigate 9/11 as part of a new commission.
Was everyone as impressed as I was by bg's thoughtful comments on those quotes by demolition experts?
Yeh he danced around that real good :) BG is an exelent dancer.
But maybe he will come back to that on monday like he said he would... But i wouldn't count on it Pomeroo.
It's more of a crapflood than a dance.
Btw Frank Legge, from that report u linked to for Pomeroo has a bachelors degree in science.
As u can see in the bottom of the next paper.
http://www.deh.gov.au/atmosphere/fuelquality/publications/submissions/pubs/logical.pdf
what site is CS?
Because i know a Democrat, and he is also from Holland
Hey Crungy and Jay
Welcome to the list LOL
Funny one guy says the fires were 500 degrees and another says there were rivers of molten steel LOL
I don't know but I have never seen a 500 degree fire, thats about the same as a soldering iron
BG:
Jones paper is one of the furthest things from a true scientific paper that I have ever read from any PhD in any field. It would due fine in the "letters to the editor" section, and that is about it.
You can throw fallacy and circular reasoning quips in there until the cows come home. The Uni stated that they had troubles with Jones "peer review" issues among other things. Was there external pressure to have him let go due to his views...you bet. I will not defend that, but it was not the only reason...by far.
TAM
hehehehe, yeh its good to be on the "list" :D
So i would like to thank my parents, family, friends, co-workers, and all the other people i forgot to mention for supporting while getting on the "list"
Thx. But this is a different Democrat i see. But also an idiot :D
I see someone posted on there a video from the doubletree hotel at the Pentagon.
Im just wondering how that can be, since judicial watch wont get that video till the 22nd of december...
http://www.judicialwatch.org/6030.shtml
That is what they consider an academic paper? I did work as a college freshman that was more scholarly than that. That was even stupider than Legge's first paper.
He never did reply to my rebuttal of that paper BTW.
2) The official reason for Kevin Ryan's dismissal doesn't hold water.
Why not? He misrepresenting himself, his position, and his company.
The moment you read his 'memo' and then realise what his job actually was there is no other arguement. No whining about 'not holding water' (pun unintended I assume). He was professionally dishonest.
If you feel otherwise, would you care to explain why?
telescopemerc said...
2) The official reason for Kevin Ryan's dismissal doesn't hold water.
Perhaps I'm missing something. Let me state what I think I know, and you correct me.
The main "public" document from Kevin Ryan's hand was an email (from his company email account, probably on company time). This email was a strongly worded letter to Frank Gayle at NIST.
In the email, Kevin was taking Gayle to task about preliminary findings that NIST had released, which revealed the stance that they were headed toward to explain the wtc collapses.
Kevin had read, soon after 9/11, some BS internal communication inside UL, that indicated that UL would have had some connection to certifying certain components (fireproofing over steel) as meeting a predefined spec. The way UL has been involved, over the years, has been to with testing and validating a particular design of these sorts of things, if my understanding is correct.
UL may have been involved in a certification process as it applies to raw steel, or steel assemblies without fireproofing. I'm less clear about that. I believe many voices has quoted Kevin, and Kevin may have not always himself made crystal clear certain distinctions.
Kevin background and position at UL was in water filtration. He has no special expertise in the subjects of steel, structural engineering, fire engineering, etc.
However, it does not take an expert to look at what NIST has published and believe there are some games are being played, because the story won't fly based on an elementary understanding of physics and materials science.
Kevin did nothing to misrepresent himself, his position, etc. in his letter, or other ways that he spoke publicly.
In any other case like this, if it did not involve something as sensitive as pointing out NIST fraud, the expected reaction toward an employee from a responsible Corporation would be at most a reprimand for not following Company Policies against not using Company resources for personal attacks, or something along those lines.
So educate me. What do I have wrong here.
I think BG is confused.
UL did a few firetests for NIST in 2004.
http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/wtc_fire_resistance_data.htm
The test results are here.
http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/ULTestResults.pdf
My contentions about Ryan, UL, and NIST have not been refuted by anything said here.
I can post the link, if need be, about UL testing, in the late 60's or early 70's, of fireproofing performance component models that match exactly what went into the contruction of the WTC.
The testing that UL did as a contractor for NIST is also a fact (you say in 2004, which I don't dispute), but different than when the UL President has allegedly referred in a letter to Company Employees.
The fact that UL moved to discredit Kevin in no way contradicts the facts or tenor of the story as I presented it.
What company in UL's position wouldn't issue a face saving document. The press statement that you quote is a cleverly worded document that is factual true, but hides, in several ways, if parsed, the real issues that Kevin was writing about. Saying that UL does not certify structural steel is correct, I imagine. However, that is a completely different issue than how hot the fires where, how much insulation "blew" off or was otherwise dislodged, and whether a massive structural failure of the building was caused the be heating of the no longer fire protected steel components.
This is what Kevin was referred to, and one does not need to be a PHd structural eng, a Phd physicists, or a phd anything to have a basis for doubting the NIST work.
I can post the link, if need be, about UL testing, in the late 60's or early 70's, of fireproofing performance component models that match exactly what went into the contruction of the WTC.
Ok, show us a link then.
Oh i forgot, im on BG's shitlist, so he won't answer me, So if someone not on BG's list can ask for that link.
Seek help, BG.
I second that emotion. Seriously. BG, you need medical attention.
Here is Dr. Frank Greening's response to the article linked by bg. Dr. Greening's technical papers are available on 911myths.com.
Ron,
I hadn't seen this article until you sent it to me. I read it last night and I have this to say about it (for now):
It is superficially well written and has, for the most part, a serious scientific tone. However, I believe it has a number of obvious errors. For example, on page 1 is says there is "little evidence of fires" in WTC 7. This is simply not true. (The CDers say essentially the same thing about WTC 1 & 2 - also not true!). On page 2 it says "more explosives were used......". What explosives!
However, the most serious issue for me is the old "it fell at near free fall" argument. I have previously carried out (unpublished) momentum tranfer calculations on WTC 7. I assumed that columns failed near the 5th to 7th floors and the upper block of about 40 floors fell one floor to start the global collapse. By the way, I ignored the initial formation of a kink visible at the roof and just consider the rapid descent of the main block. (I mention this point because if you include the kinking at the roof, the observed collapse time is over 15 seconds!)
My momentum transfer method gives a WTC 7 collapse time for the main block of about 6.7 seconds, which is close to the usually quoted figure and, yes indeed, only about 0.5 seconds slower than free fall. But I have no problem with this result. If you compare the collapse of WTC 1, WTC 2 and WTC 7, you will note that the number of floors in the descending block that crushed the floors below them was approx 15, 30 and 40 respectively. If you assume these buildings had about the same floor mass of say 3500 tonnes, you have the mass of the descending blocks equal to 52,500 tonnes (WTC 1); 105,000 tonnes (WTC 2); 140,000 tonnes (WTC 7). Thus WTC 7 had by far the largest "hammer" and was therefore the fastest crushing machine on a time per floor basis.
For the Twin Towers, the effective acceleration of the collapse was about 6 m/s^2. For WTC 7 it is more like 8 m/s^2 which is actually 20 % less than free fall - a significant amount. (I believe Mr. Legge's 9 m/s^2 figure makes no sense!) I actually also assumed that the energy needed to collapse one floor of WTC 7 was more than double the figure I used for the Twin Towers and still get a collapse in less than 7 seconds.
My final comment is that I have not made measurements of the drop distances as given on page 3 of the ST9/11 article. I would like to see the raw data used by Mr. Legge since his graph data points are only about 0.16 seconds apart and the author appears to be able to make height measurements accurate to within less than 50 centimeters from a video taken from (my guess) at least half a kilometer away!?!
Cheers,
Frank
Kevin did nothing to misrepresent himself, his position, etc. in his letter, or other ways that he spoke publicly.
You're kidding, right?
He acted as if he were an employee of UL, and made several statements on their behalf..without their knowledge. Especially in light that he wasn't an employee of UL, let alone had anything to do with UL and steel.
"As I'm sure you know, the company I work for certified the steel components used in the construction of the WTC buildings." -Kevin Ryan, Waterboy.
You don't think this is wrong? I guess the morals of truthers are always conveniently flexible.
At least as a Mechanical Engineer you'd be closer to the SE prefession than Waterboy.
Common sense leads you to the answer.
No-one is going to ridicule you for saying you were wrong, and infact, you will be praised by people.
From my experience, people at JREF are way more in touch, logical, critial, and smarter than any Conspiracy Theorist i've read from.
yea, this 'denier turns debunker' guy is the one who said the 2.3 trillions lost is a myth:) brilliant. he is 18 years old. You debunkers have won one over, congrats. Some kid . LOL. Guess how many found out today that its erh quite strange that 3 towers collapsed. LOL . A few more than one.
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