1 3 words: Al Capone's vault

2 Jerry Rivers is a douchebag. 

3 Fire doesn't melt steel!!

And buildings roll over!! 


http://t.co/T37qVhr

4 Not only that, the weight from successive floors collapsing adds to the total mass that is rushing downwards.  Ofcourse it looks like a controlled demolition! 

5

You know what else?

They found a lot of debris -- concrete, drywall, glass,steel, etc. -- at the site.

The EXACT type of debris one would find after a building has been DELIBERATELY razed!

QED

6 Sigh. So many amateur engineers all of a sudden. Look, Popular Mechanics put paid to this nonsense a long time ago. It's time for the truthers to shut up and quit insulting our intelligence.

7 Someone if the 101st should tok care of him in the Iraqi dessert when they had the chance

8 Remember, this is the quality of brain that gave us the climate-change 'consensus'.

9 Uh, Geraldo... learn to read (and comprehend): Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report Most of us read that report from 5+ years ago and understood the conspiracy theories to be ridiculous. Apparently, though, Geraldo lands in the 1/4 of American people South Park says are riTARDed.

10 Ace, you need to link that Truther demostrating with a building made from chicken wire that fire CANNOT melt steel.

11 Geraldo Rivera can't melt butter with his mind.

12 Geraldo: Yeah, I'm Open Minded About 9/11 Conspiracy Theories
Cut.  Jib.  Newsletter? 

13
After countless trials on models (built from Jenga^tm logs), there is only one conclusion: there is no way these buildings came down without carefully placed controlled explosives.

14 I thought buildings collapsed upwards into the sky where they go to building heaven and they are greated at the Pearly Gates by Frank Llyod Wright

15 Hmmm, who wants to bet if some anchor was openly questioning whether Obama was born in America he would be fired by now? Meanwhile Rosie and this jackass spew wilder filth and remain hired.

16

He's right, of course.  After they destroyed WTC buildings one and two and punched a big hole in the Pentagon, they thought to themselves ... "maybe this won't get anybody's attention..."

so they had to destroy WTC seven too.  That did it.  That made everyone sit up and take notice.

17 hey, remember the guy that did the YouTube experiments with chicken wire and a campfire?  Sounds like he's making a comeback! hahahahaha

18 My problem with this whole truther thing is much more simple. Here it is: imagine the hundreds or thousands of people who would be required to pull off such a trick- tons and tons of explosives, carefully wired to beams. Pallets of blasting caps, wires, etc. A massive cover-up, in short, with thousands of Americans dying. All of this put into place in just a few months, by the way- Bushitler (snark) was only inaugurated in Jan 01! And out of those thousands of people, involved over many months and seeing the consequences for the last nearly 10 years....not ONE has had an attack of conscience? Not ONE had a family member who they made a death-bed confession to? It's not the crime, it's the cover-up. In this case, the truthers want us to focus on some fire-doesn't-melt-steel BS, but ignore the fact that NOT ONE person "involved" has taken credit, been caught, confessed, etc...except, of course, the people who actually did it (AQ). Think about how monstrously evil a large group of people would have to be to pull this off...what do truthers believe about the rest of government? Bizarre.

19 Look, it's simple: Bush planted charges in those buildings and then set them off to make it look like Muslim hijackers destroyed those buildings with planes. We all know that you can't destroy a skyscraper with a plane because nobody flies planes into buildings that big. The fact that two planes flew into these buildings should tip you all off to the Bush plan...

20 What year is this where he's still questioning what happened?

Wasn't he actually rather hawkish on the GWOT for being a liberal because he was in NYC when 9/11 happened?

The stupid.. it burns.

21

Being a truther should be grounds for an on-the-spot execution........

So bye-bye Charlie Sheen.......

22 JENGA!!!

23 11 Ace, you need to link that Truther demostrating with a building made from chicken wire that fire CANNOT melt steel.

Here you go!  *warning, link leads to DU*

Can a jet fuel/hydrocarbon fire collapse a steel structure? An experiment.

24 About the only examples of a building collapsing not due to demolition I can think of are some of the apartment buildings that were destroyed during the 1994 Northridge earthquake. And yeah, they pretty much pancaked.

25

Look, suckers.  I have problems with the video too.  I've done hundreds of computer simulations that reveal that the exact same effect would occur if Heraldo's ego were to deflate.

Concidence?  You decide.

26 I reiterate my call that "Truther" shitheads need daily face-punchings.

27 ace, not having ever seen any other structure collapse sideways is proof tof how far the govt has gone to cover their tracks. now ifear the govt will arrest me for exposing the truth!

28 Gravity, it's not only a good idea, it's the law!

29 Hmmm, who wants to bet if some anchor was openly questioning whether Obama was born in America he would be fired by now? Report to Room 101 for reconditioning, comrade.

30

why is this surprising?

wasn't the statistic that nearly a third of libs back in 2006 considered themselves Truthers?

but no worries. it's far more  C-R-A-Z-Y that far fewer conservatives questioned a man on his citizenship when said Man travelled far and wide talking about his ethnic heritage.

/perspective

31 He needs to believe it, because he hates the people that tend to be for border control, deportation of illegal aliens. That is bad, so discrediting people who think a way he doesn't like is more important than anything, how else will he stop them?

32 Damn sock!

There was also a claim that the planes that hit the World Trade Towers had missiles affixed to their fuselages in order to increase the damage.   Some of those photoshops were hilarious, in a horrifying, "oh my god, the stupid, it hurts" way. 

33 28 I reiterate my call that "Truther" shitheads need daily face-punchings.

Posted by: Waterhouse at November 15, 2010 12:31 PM (WDYCv)

Followed by a good mocking and de-pantsing

34 People who latch on to nuttiness like that NEED to.

35 what sad is that the fact that obama hasn't revealed the truth about 9-11 means that he's in on it too!!!11!111 The Pop Science guys who debunk the loose change idiots ...IIRC... actually found a tower that collapsed the way the WTC's did.

36 Funny that Giraldo asks "questions about 911 but yet questions about me engaging in the horizontal mombo with two TGIFridays hostesses while my wife was undergoing stage 5 kemo treatment were pointedly ignored like a fart in a crowded elevator.

37

In a confusing and complicated world, Teh Crazy^tm is actually a comfort for the feebleminded.

Foolish consistencies ain't got nothin' on conspiracy theories.

38 Gravity - never heard of it...

39

As someone who works in the Steel Industry, I can assure you, fire(or more specifically a source of immense heat) does in fact melt steel. Either that or Pittsburgh has been in on this "fire melting steel conspiracy" for the past 180 years.

However, I would point out that the fire at the WTC didn't "melt" the steel and liquify it, it heated it to such a temperature that it lost its hardened strength and began to bend and warp.

40 I was on vacation when they taught gravity at school.

41 This is the very rare exception..

When a building in Turkey fell off to one side and rolled on the roof while being demolished.



http://t.co/T37qVhr

Beyond that..  the rest of them do fall down like pancakes like everyone else says.

42 So Ace is saying we should build skyscrapers out of Lego blocks?

43

It astounds me that more truthers don't consider Adam Carolla's point during Ed Asner's ramblings; if the government is so good at gigantic conspiracies, why didn't they dump some barrels of mustard gas somewhere in Iraq and claim they found Saddam's WMDs? That certainly would have been much easier to pull off than Sept. 11, and it would have spared the Bush administration a lot of embarrassment.

Well, maybe it doesn't astound me. Nothing these kooks claim can astound anymore.

44 The proof that it was a planned demolition is in my safe under Wrigley Stadium

45 Unfortunately there is no WW 2 bombing footage of 110 story sky scrapers being bombed into collapse. However, I don't think there were any 110 story sky scrapers in existance at that time.

46 I can't remember a time when Jerry Rivers put his brain in gear before releasing the brake on his mouth.

I suppose he's perfect for today's Fucks News, which also features -- and hands out handsome paychecks to -- such mental giants as the never-popular Sheppy-Poo Smith and Sean "you're a great American, Newt" Hannity. Any network that devotes breathless coverage to the "Barefoot Bandit" and wastes hours on days-old "Breaking News" stories just has to have a gink like Rivers on the payroll.

He makes great fodder for "Poppin' Fresh," too. When the flow of polls to anal-yze in excruciating detail dries up, there's always Rivers. John Ziegler, too.

47 I just wanna know how Neil Armstrong managed to not make squish marks on the moon. I've stepped on cheese before. Something ain't right.  And don't try telling me it's Pecorino. God is not Italian.

48 Folks, treat stories like this like you treat trolls. Ignore them. The only reason this ossified horseshit passes Geraldo's mouth is his boyfriend's popularity has collapsed. So, to take the heat off of the failure of the Obama Regime, it's time to dust off the old chestnut... Bush-Cheney McHitlerburton 9/11 Paranoia!

49 Think about how monstrously evil a large group of people would have to be to pull this off...what do truthers believe about the rest of government? Bizarre. Posted by: DMG at November 15, 2010 12:30 PM (Du8+/) In the immortal words of Melvin Frohicke: "This is the same government that gave us AMTRAK and the Susan B. Anthony dollar". And yet they are capable of pulling off a massive operation to destroy a skyscraper without anybody noticing. What's next Geraldo? Chemtrails?

50 The very idea that there is a 9-11 Truther myth to debunk at all is testimony to how stupid a large portion of the American public is.

The idea that 53% of the public voted for an America hating communist is actual proof of how stupid they are.

51

silly question in observation of the whole gravity thing:
didnÂ’t WTC 1 and 2 collapse straight down, even after the catastrophic damage caused by the airplane impacts?

If the towers didnÂ’t skew to the side, even with off-center structural damage, why would it be unusual for other buildings to collapse straight down? The proof of non-controlled building collapse is right there.

52 Ace,

You base your "theory" on the physics you learned in college; probably an introductory class that encompassed a bunch of stuff, but began with Newtonian mechanics. And to further extrapolate; you are probably assuming that the force keeping the building standing (all of those columns and supports and struts and walls) was weakened by fire and falling debris from the towers, and the acceleration of gravity was allowed to operate without an equal and opposite force; thus the falling of the building. And now I am going way out on a limb; you think that because the force of gravity is always toward the center of mass exerting the force, that this building fell towards that center, which from our perspective is straight down. Very logical. All of this can be backed up by 100s of years of physics and engineering research.

And you would be wrong because Bush is a bad man. 

53 But do they have a single recorded case of this happening in the real world?

Not WTC-sized buildings, but yes. Many. You can find some on youtube.

Buildings that fall because they're undermined or weakened at their base—if they fall, rather than just tilt or sink onto the weak area—almost always fall to a side, like in a Godzilla movie.

But that's not what happened to the WTC, so that's not what happened to the WTC.

There's no point saying so, though. Truthers, of whatever variant, aren't reasoning their way to anything. They're reassuring each other that they're not you.

54

Somebody needs to hit Geraldo in the face with a chair again...

55 history used to run their engineering disasters on a reoccuring thing on modern marvels. at least one partial building collapse was a large (20ish) story mall in asia somewere. it was brought downby the weight of a/c onthe roof iirc. and also, buildings collapse inside first, sincethat's werethe structure actually is. the facade is then pulled down.

56 Actually there is quite a bit of war footage of buildings collapsing due to er, uncontrolled demolition, let's say. And some of the San Fran Earthquake aftermath, I think. Not that it shows anything reallysurprising.

57 You are ignoring the main argument here: Building 7 was not hit by a plane. It is supposed to have collapsed because of fire. Bu it is clearly known that fire can not melt the steel that was used in this building. The only thing that allegedly made the fires so hot in the Twin Towers was the jet fuel. There was no jet fuel involved in the fire at Building 7.

58

Every building I have ever seen demolished has taken months and months of planning by dozens of people who have been in the business for decades. On top of that, all these buildings have their entire guts ripped out for months before hand to insure the explosives can be placed at key locations that require entire floors and walls to be ripped apart....yet these morons want us to believe all this was done to the Trade Center buildings without ripping out a single floor, wall or window, using one of the FEW companies in the entire world that even know how to do this AND they did it all in stealth....keeping in mind no one, and I mean no one has ever collapsed a building, let alone several, of that size in the history of our world...ok.

59
Why do Leftists believe in the worst and most evil government conspiracies?

pay attention now...

BECAUSE THIS IS WHAT THEY WOULD DO IF THEY COULD.

60 The structural integrity of the buildings was compromised from the get-go.  Why, the last time I experienced gravity's effects, I created an elastic hole in the earth which propelled me, intact, mind you, back up into the atmosphere, where I subsequently landed in a prickly cactus patch.

Yikes!

61 Hoffa was buried in the basement of the WTC.    They had to get rid of the body somehow.

62 Building 7 is Trig's Father!

63

Anyone who's watched the Discovery Channel knows that those building implosions REQUIRE that the building be gutted and, as DMG says, wired carefully and fully. The quantity of materials required just to do the explosions could not be brought in unobtrusively.

I blame the education system.

Dumbasses.

64
Remember when Leftists complained that Bush 'shredded' the Constitution?

They were projecting their own desires to 'shred' the Constitution if/when they seized control of the govt.

65 Half of these people are just plain stupid, and the other half just want to hate on Bush and keep a 'he's evil' thing going.

Remember when Al Gore tried to steal the election.  These people are using the same tactics they used to established the meme of Bush stole the election when it was obvious it was the other way around.

66

Building 7 is Trig's Father!

full of win

67 Oh God, it's been 9 years, let's not relive the great truther stompout. The truther whackamole game has lost its charm. They are too stupid to deal with. It all comes down this: Every theory about the physics of the towers falling by anything other than weakened supports originates from people who are functionally high school dropouts.

68 The force necessary to cause a building to collapse sideways are way beyond anything that an airplane could cause.  Hell, earthquakes don't even cause buildings to collapse sideways.  Even roadways collapse more or less vertically in a major earthquake.

Maybe these folks could draw the force diagrams to show how much horizontal force it would take to displace the top of the building far enough over that it would fall outside of the building footprint.  And then explain where all that horizontal force came from.  And then explain how, as it was being pushed sideways, the support structure was not over-stressed enough to have yielded and collapsed vertically anyway.  There is damn all force for horizontal acceleration in any of this.

69 The fake cyclist which proves the whole conspiracy

70
Remember when Democrats were outraged at the deficits, reckless spending, and corruption?


...

71 64 Hoffa was buried in the basement of the WTC.    They had to get rid of the body somehow.

Posted by: huerfano at November 15, 2010 12:41 PM (QgmBR)

And the remains of Amelia Earhrdt

72 19 All of this put into place in just a few months, by the way- Bushitler (snark) was only inaugurated in Jan 01!
_________

Ah, but you're assuming W was the mastermind. Suppose it was really H.W. pulling the strings? He had twelve years to get the buildings wired; two Reagan presidencies and his own. Then it was just a matter of getting his stooge son into office so he could pull the trigger.

73

The point of this isn't rehashing the Truther argument, it's that Gerald Rivera would even entertain it.

I dislike Geraldo as much as anyone, but Truthers are batshit crazy, I didn't think he would sink so low.

74
Q: Isn't there video of about 100 tons of I-beams and shit being ejected from one of the towers that fell directly on #7's roof? 

A: Why YES, yes there is such video.

There ain't no structure short of the NORAD bunker in Cheyenne mountain that could withstand that mass of scrap steel and crap dropped from a thousand feet up onto its roof.  Roofs are designed to withstand static loads that increase slowly with snow/ice and shit like that.  Any kind of significant shock load will instantly shear the webbing and bolts. 

Oh, and when your collapse is being accelerated by a bunch of crap falling at 150mph or so when it impacts, that alters the 32ft/sec/sec freefall acceleration of the subsequent collapsed junk if the impacting mass never comes to a stop and blows right through without stopping.

These fucking truthers are a malignant cancer pitching their BS for political/fame purposes.  They don't seek truth, which is plain as day to anyone who is intellectually honest and knows anything about structures and engineering, they seek notoriety or some political outcome.

75 Hell, earthquakes don't even cause buildings to collapse sideways.

Exactly!

76

Plus, a fire concentrated on a floor or two would be enough to get the chain reaction going in a building built like a piece of shit.

No, not that.  A building where water pressure has been lost, unforseeably, so that it reacted to fire like it was built like a piece of shit.

It's my piece of shit theory.

One more thing.  If anyone thinks for one second that the insurance company that paid-up did not investigate every conceivable way to avoid paying this claim--and in much greater depth than any of these truthers could ever possibly dream of--then they are [insert very insulting metaphor, preferably one dealing with stupidity, questions of parentage, stupidity, small penises, or stupidity].

77 O/T: I just want to make clear how much we appreciate all the Muslim contributions to engineering and science.

78
But it is clearly known that fire can not melt the steel that was used in this building.

Of course! Because it was magical steel.

79 Fuck off Jerry, just retire already.

80 Pull it!

81 Roofs are designed to withstand static loads that increase slowly with snow/ice and shit like that.

Exactly!

82 Oh, Ace, these truther idiots don't deserve this much attention.  Geraldo and Ed Asner and all the others can go fuck themselves on Truther Island as far as I'm concerned, and leave the tasks that require actual thinking skills to the rest of us.

83 DMG is exactly right in saying it takes 100s of people and tons of speciality explosives to bring down a building. I've managed several large demolition projects and not only does it take those things (the people, the explosives, the det cord) it also takes a great deal of PREDEMOLITION work. So, not only did Bushitler hide all of the people he also disguised a 'set for demolition' building to look like a regular office building with people working, eating & doing everything else people do in offices without noticing all the holes drilled in columns and walls and all of the det cord trailing from the holes to a central firing point. So, DMG not only were all the CIA/demolition workers in on the conspiracy and keeping silent, but so were ALL the people actually working at the WTC. Truthers are idiots...dangerous, stupid, blind idiots

84 The problem with the highschool dropouts who foment the sideways collapse theories (and the one construction worker...not an actual demolition expert..that they trotted out) is that we're used to that being the way we see trees fall. Trees are not buildings. Trees are solid. Blds are skeletal.

85 And of course this dipshit "mechanical engineer"'s calculations suck too. If it fell 105 ft in 2.25 s, that's an average of 46.2 ft/s. In free-fall from a standstill, again using this fucknugget's numbers, it would only average 36.2 ft/s over that time. So this "mechanical engineer" is actually saying that in addition to explosives, BushCheneyMcHalliburton attached downward-pointing MOTHERFUCKING ROCKETS to WTC 7 to accelerate into the ground faster than gravity could.

86

Demolishing a building isn't easy. It takes weeks of work. Columns need to be weakened, drywall needs to be removed to expose columns, miles of wire running from charge to charge.

To do this in completely occupied buildings and not have any one notice is an insane theory.

87

Posted by: The Mega Independent at November 15, 2010 12:43 PM (f3dlM)

I'm convinced.   

/sarc. 

88 They are correct in one thing that for the building to fall in the manner it does most if not all of it's lower support had to fail nearly simultaneously. The problem is they suggest only explosives could effect this and nothing else. That's ridiculous. Yes explosives are the one thing we know positively will, usually if placed properly, but that does not automatically preclude it from happening for any other reason.

Watching the building fall it is clear the center of the building collapses slightly before the exterior walls. Something, most likely damage and fire, caused the central supports to fail and the interior floors with them. This falling material  was massive and took out the extereior walls supports and they came down. Yes this happens in a rapid sequence but it would once it started wouldn't it?

One question I have for those who give credence to explosives is who exactly do they think it is that was brave enough to places explosives in a burning building?

Also it's assumed the Towers were brought down, by Truthers, to effect a war. Why would 7 have been brought down? Did they they think people would balk at going to war unless we had 3 buildings down?

89 IIRC, the top 20 or 30 floors of each tower fell as a unit, tilting over somewhat btw, then the incredible momentum of those impacts crushed the floors below one by one in an irresistible cascade.

90 But I once saw this secret military show where all we had to piece it together, was indivudual movie segments.  Apparnatly a giant lizard attacked New York and when it hit a building, it just fell over onto the next one.  The heroes were able to climb onto the more stable building and escape.  You see, it can happen.

91 Posted by: Steve S at November 15, 2010 12:43 PM (IfigT)

 Of course! A plane...A PLANE! hit each of the buildings and they barely moved. Anyone care to calculate the force exerted on the buildings by two large passenger jets? And they swayed a bit; that's all.

I watched the second plane hit. I watched them burn and collapse. I could smell the smoke from my house. So fuck you to anyone who dares to blame anyone but the psychotic Islamic murdering pigs who did this.

92 and the hundreds of demolition engineers who placed the explosives

93
btw, anyone know how 9/11 is being presented in history/social studies books in the schools?

94 Tower 1 did NOT pancake perfectly. In fact just as it starts falling, you can see the top portion leaning over just a bit in a sickening fashion. That is why the collapsing towers actually crashed into nearby buildings. Not a very controlled collapse at all. These people are hateful pig-eyed little worms with their stupid little theories. And Geraldo needs to go away.

95 The guy who says En Fuego! could clear this up if anyone could.

96 highschool dropouts.

97 52 In the immortal words of Melvin Frohicke: "This is the same government that gave us AMTRAK and the Susan B. Anthony dollar".
___________

Melvin Frohicke? You mean El Diablo?

God, I miss that show.

98 Another useful site. 

BTW, Tony Szamboti is a generic nutter conspiracy theorist.  How do people like that stay employed?

99 Come to think of it, builldings always fall sideways. I can't think of a single cartoon where they fell straight down. I should do more research...

100 I used to get upset about this - until I realized the majority of liberals are truthers. Seriously, get a group of them together away from prying conservative eyes and suddenly they all "question the official line".

101

The problem with the Truthers is that they are engineering retards.  Their prattle about "fire can't melt steel" overlooks that fact that high temperatures change the properties of steel and it gets more ductile.  At a certain point, the steel in the WTC could no longer support the load and the building collapsed.

A building undergoing a failure like that HAS TO FALL VERTICALLY.  There is no external force applied to make the building tip over.  The only force exerted on the building was its own weight being pulled down vertically by the acceleration of gravity.

I would expect the acceleration to be something under 1 g due to the internal resistance of the system.

102 Fire cant melt steele!

103 When i turn to Fox on the weekends and I notice Geraldo is on I immediately start shouting at my screen and then turn the channel with a sigh of relief. He is just such of a joke that stopped being funny years ago.

104 Geraldo, we should talk.

105 911 conspiracies are about as believable as me falling asleep with my wife in a hotel when a 19 year old intern is waiting next door naked with a 12 pack and XBox playing Call of Duty:Black Ops.

106 I'm sorry I forgot to add: And not only were the office workers in on the conspiracy, but they went to work knowing their building was going to be explosively demolished.

107 Ace, your Physics bona fides are OK by me.  You must remember that irrational people can't be dealt with rationally, however.  They will always find a way to out-stupid any answer you will have.  How I wish Richard Feynman were still here to lend his opinion.

108 There was that dingbat who mentioned the faster than gravity thing. No...it fell as fast as gravity. Also, the WTC's collapsed onto lower floors. The lower floors didn't collapse to the ground. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing but no knowledge and a little conspiracy is a motherfucker.

109 OJ was fucking framed!

110 the retards are thinking of trees, which is their only experience of things falling. trees are not buildings. discuss.

111

Demolishing a building isn't easy. It takes weeks of work. Columns need to be weakened, drywall needs to be removed to expose columns, miles of wire running from charge to charge.

To do this in completely occupied buildings and not have any one notice is an insane theory.

Ah, but that's what they want you to believe...

112 The Jews sunk the Titanic. Ice-berg!

113

My fear is, that all these large buildings, down around Wall Street, will cause Manhattan to tip over and capsize.

114 Jerry has a mind...?? wow, who'd a thunk it?

115 Maybe Michael J. Fox gave the WTC his Parkinson's Disease. 

116

the first point that needs to be made to the rocket scientists pushing this is that the first tower to come down fell on the rest of the complex! It destroyed the hotel, the two convention centers, and damaged wtc seven severely enough that the building had to be evacuated. While it is pretty amazing that more buildings were not damaged in the area, it is pretty stupid to say that none were, and that would be a pretty good indicator to me it was not controlled. But then why get in the way of a good crazy?

117 Truthers should every time and always be dealt with in a fashion reminiscient of Buzz Aldrin.

118 God, I miss that show. Posted by: Anachronda at November 15, 2010 12:49 PM (IrbU4) So do I, but you can't keep conspiracy theories, or believeable ones anyway, going forever. That's what Geraldo is trying (unsuccessfully) to do with this.

119 treehouses are buildings.

120 The people that believe this kind of hooey have obviously never met the building engineer of a large office building. You let off an explosive Hilti fastener to anchor a ceiling tile track support without letting him know about it you're going to have a large person suddenly crawling up your shirt. The idea that the building supers and engineers wouldn't notice while their building was wired for demo makes believing Obama was the only honest politician in Cook County look sane by comparison

121
Only the joo employees were in on it.

And we all know all the joos stayed home on 9/11.

122 Breaking News: Geraldo still a blithering idiot.

123 Sock off

124 O/T

Chris Christie, some kind of non-meteorologist now, says he's skeptical that humans are responsible for global warming.

(Says it hasn't been proven one way or the other and wants more evidence . . . not perfect, but getting there.)

125 Not a Truther, BUT... http://www.nkjlive.com/2009/07/building-collapse-mumbai-or-shanghai/ Just for the record. Now I'm grabbing my popcorn and watching the Crazeee!

126

Also, it didn't actually collapse into its own footprint. Buildings to the south were damaged as it toppled. Also, it took 18 seconds to collapse, not 2.

Gabe - you oughta know better than to think a truther is going to argue in good faith.

127
These nuts like Steve S up there would be amazed to know you can submerge an empty cup into water and the inside will stay completely dry.

Unpossible!

128 Time for Geraldo to go back to arguing for blanket amnesty for illegal immigrants.

129 ah, minx hates google chrome, so you're not getting the hyperlink. Suck it, Trebek.

130 To change the topic slightly, how do you square a second?  This is why I am not a physicist. I could do the math, but I asked silly questions.

131

"They lack a contrary case -- that is, in their stupid little minds they are thinking that most buildings brought down by uncontrolled explosions topple over like Lego towers, falling over to their sides (and knocking over the dinosaur toys right next to them)."

What's interesting about this to me is something I've never heard a single commentator say, or write, since 9/11, but what I've thought ever since that day:  "Mohammad Atta and his boys actually thought that they were going to knock WTC 1 and 2 over onto their sides the instant the planes hit the top of the towers!"  Bin Ladin probably shit himself when he saw that it took so long for the towers to finally fall, and that they collapsed straight down, and that "only" three thousand American were killed in the attacks. 

Had things worked how their rudimentary brains had thought they would, the loss of life would have been in the hundreds of thousands.  I guess physics works the way it works, not the way Allah wills it to.

132 Obama's birth certificate, college transcripts, Indonesian passport, drug-dealer contact list, ghost-writer invoice, and New Party membership card were in the basement. They had to go.

133

I'm praying for O'Reilly to book Geraldo...inshallah, O'Reilly will down an extra shot before going on the air. 

And then Dennis Miller will insult him utilizing references to 1930s opera singers, famous chocolatiers, and male genitalia. 

134 BTW, Tony Szamboti is a generic nutter conspiracy theorist.  How do people like that stay employed?
Posted by: Y-not at November 15, 2010 12:49 PM

I was a second grader at the time of the Kennedy assassination, too.  Coincidence?

135
No, you cannot light a lightbulb using only a potato and a couple of leads.

It's not possible!

136 Think of how many other buildings are wired with explosives right now!  My god, every urban center in America is literally one gigantic stock of C4 and Semtex just waiting to go off at any minute, the moment a Republican president is in the White House!

137
Turning solids into liquids and back into solids and even into vapor?

No way.

138 Had things worked how their rudimentary brains had thought they would, the loss of life would have been in the hundreds of thousands. I guess physics works the way it works, not the way Allah wills it to. Posted by: Sharkman at November 15, 2010 01:02 PM (sqNU7) I remember hearing years ago that a retired physics professor wrote a book about what the world would be like if the laws of physics actually worked the way some of his dim-witted students thought they did. Anybody else remember that?

139 48 Unfortunately there is no WW 2 bombing footage of 110 story sky scrapers being bombed into collapse. However, I don't think there were any 110 story sky scrapers in existance at that time.

Posted by: Ben at November 15, 2010 12:36 PM (wuv1c)

Yeah... I feel so... inadequate... only 102...

140 Geraldo needs to be reminded of the 10 ways that Dick Cheney can kill a man.

141 I think the reason why truthers are so infuriating is that they are liberals distilled to their crazy crazy essence. Take the inability to listen, to acknowledge counter argument, and the utter lack of knowledge about what they're talking about and you've got the soul of Nana peloso.

142 The funny/sad thing is that the collapse of the the towers DOESN'T look like a controlled demolition. In every controlled demolition I've seen, the building's supports are taken out at every level pretty much simultaneously, causing the whole building to collapse in at once (or at least a set vertical section). There is no "pancaking."

Yet, with the WTC, floors don't start falling until the floors above them collapse, exactly like what DOESN'T happen in a controlled demolition.

That's what makes this whole business really idiotic.

As for their free-fall argument, I guess the addition of explosions an instant before impact magically causes the entire floor to instantly gain the same momentum as debris that has been falling for a second or more longer.

143 Guys -- gravity pulls down. Directly down.
Yeah. Tell it to my jugs.

144 Conspiracy theories are gay. Except the vast, right-wing one.

145 Posted by: Raddave at November 15, 2010 12:52 PM (lYKi5)

Wrong! Hah!

It was the Jooos who rigged the buildings, and on 9/11 they didn't go to work.

146 Anyway, I hope Geraldo gets fired. This is not the aggressive pursuit of the truth. It's just providing a forum for a nut.

147 Posted by: joy behar at November 15, 2010 01:06 PM (eQPq+)

Thank you for that laugh.

148

What gravity?

149 That mumbai link is interesting. It looks like the ground shifted or something. that's a toppling, not a collapse...just to keep terms straight.

150 "146 Guys -- gravity pulls down. Directly down. Yeah. Tell it to my jugs." I hear you, Joy, but your knee is getting in the way.

151

Lookit Wingnuts, when I was a boy I used to run the garden hose in the flower beds to recreate the Mekong Delta. I can state with absolute certainty that my Little Green Army Men would not sink and drown, WITHOUT human intervention.

See what I am saying Cons? It is impossible for Little Green Army Men to unfloat without holding them down and pushing their little bodies into the mud below. Impossible!

 

152 What is that bright thing in the sky?!?  I have never seen its like!  This must be some foul plot to blind me!

153

Fox thought it was no problem when Geraldo talked about wanting to spit on Michelle Malkin.

They probably have no problem with him saying this shit either. They are welcome to keep paying him, but they are not going to be watched by me.

154 Lots of buildings fall sideways in demolitions even when they are suppose to fall straight down.   Here are some you-tube file names.
uKeENdyIluI&NR=1
ozfzr3kkp_4
Search for failed demolitions.

The biggest failure of the "truthers" is their failure to understand what the shockwave that travels down the structure does to the foundation of the building.  The amplitude of the shock wave doubles at the reflection.  This is well known to sophmore physics students.  The world trade center collapse include shock waves traveling down the tubular structure from the top 20-30 floors collapsing on the next level down like the building was hit with God's own hammer.

155 Where is their "control study" of a building falling by some cause other than a controlled demolition? How can they say with certainty that buildings don't naturally fall in a pancake collapse without a single control case of a building falling in any other manner? You're asking these people to pay attention to things like science and math standards and practices. The same people who in college go into "liberal arts" majors where math and science is not necessary. The same people who get their "news" from esteemed news outlets like SNL and Comedy Central. The same people who reject science when it comes to fetal ultrasounds, Anthropogenic Global Warming and embryonic/adult stem cell research. So what makes you believe these people will actually embrace science and math standards when it comes to blaming Booooosh and a massive conspiracy for the Islamic terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001? As they say, you cannot reason someone out of something, which they did not first reason themselves into. You're using reason and logic, when the Left is all about emotion. Have you forgotten already that these are the same people who reject the excellent Popular Mechanics debunking article, not based on logic or reason, but based on more irrational, emotional conspiracies (the people who wrote the article are related to people who have some vested interest in the conspiracies being wrong or some such BS)?

156 Geraldo, Geraldo, this is your conscience speaking. Get off Fox! Go to MSNBC. You're crazy, Geraldo, bat-shit crazy.

157

Also, Little Green Army men don't spontaneously combust unless doused with lighter fluid! That goes for model airplanes too. Suck on that Bush Lovers!

158 My fingers stink after I scratch my butt.

159 103 I used to get upset about this - until I realized the majority of liberals are truthers. Seriously, get a group of them together away from prying conservative eyes and suddenly they all "question the official line".

Posted by: 18-1 at November 15, 2010 12:50 PM (7BU4a)

The funny thing about them to me is that when they start spouting this shit and know you're conservative.  "I thought you were a conservative, why would you believe what the government was telling you?"

160 My boogers taste sweety and salty.

161 Ace, no Jews left my Lego tower and it toppled over like a domino. Can you name one Jew that left the WTC on 9/11? Didn't think so.

162 The funny thing about them to me is that when they start spouting this shit and know you're conservative. "I thought you were a conservative, why would you believe what the government was telling you?" Posted by: buzzion at November 15, 2010 01:13 PM Yet, those same liberals unconditionally believe everything their Democrat/Obama masters tell them. "Oh, but he's different! He's about hope and change and . . . blah blah blah . . ."

163 My favorite is their "facts" page. The #1 fact? Fire can't melt steel baby!

164 143 Geraldo needs to be reminded of the 10 ways that Dick Cheney can kill a man.   We're talking about one of them right now!

165 Geraldo's going with the rumor Dick Cheney and Pat Caddell were seen entering building seven carrying explosives.  Or so I've heard.

166

The WTC towers used tube construction, which means almost all of the load-bearing was performed by the outer walls (and some by the elevator column "spine" in the center) -- everything in between was trusses and floors.

Of course it will collapse downward.

(Also, after both buildings had been impacted, there was a perfectly parallel sliver of light in between them, even though they had been struck from opposite sides -- after impact, they remained perfectly erect. Again, how else could they have fallen, but straight down.)

167 Forget physics for a moment.

Let's make this even more simple. Why? Because I'm too dumb to argue physics and I want to look smart...

Let's grant them the possibility that a controlled demolition occurred.

The next question, is why?

Why would this even be necessary? If someone wanted to start a war for oil or whatever their stupid fucking theory is, wouldn't the act of ramming two jets in the World Trade Towers and killing even a few hundred people be enough of a justification to act?

What, we needed the additional spectacle of the towers falling? Seeing two jets ram into them and create a giant ball of flame wasn't enough?

Seeing people jump from the uppermost floors wasn't enough?

It's not even that they're challenged on the facts, it's that their entire premise is less credible than the plot of your average James Bond movie.

168 I wouldn't consider what happened in Oklahoma City a "controlled demolition" yet if I recall the pictures correctly, didn't the floors immediately above the explosion collapse directly on top of one another? The whole building didn't fall over sideways, only the floors directly above fell in a straight-down "demolition-style" manner.

169

If I was AQ, I'd be pissed -- these Truthers are trying to steal their thunder.  What's any self-respecting jihadi to do?

I vote that we give them Geraldo and Rosie as a (first) offering...you know, outreach and all that.

170
The best evidence that a rogue US Government did not knock down a bunch of buildings in NYC, killing thousands? The truther "researchers" who supposedly exposed this dastardly conspiracy are still alive.

I mean really, if the US Government (or the Bilderbergers, Illuminati, Freemasons, lizard people or the Kiwanis Club) had murdered 3k Americans for shadowy ends, why would they be scared to disappear a few pesky truthers?

171 >>Where is their "control study" of a building falling by some cause other than a controlled demolition? How can they say with certainty that buildings don't naturally fall in a pancake collapse without a single control case of a building falling in any other manner?<<

There have been cases of buildings collapsing in a lateral fashion.  The causes of these collapses (the ones that I'm aware of, anyway) are due to either earthquake lateral forces or some sort of catastrophic foundation failure or settlement.  Here's one in Shanghai.  Clearly, it's not the kind of "control" you're looking for.

All the collapses due to fire that I've seen are just straight down.  I don't think anyone who is familiar with building structural systems would have any other expectation. 

I don't have any axe to grind with Mechanical Engineers, but that guy on Geraldo should stick to designing motors, or air conditioning or piping systems and leave the structural design and analysis to Structural Engineers and Architects.

172 Why would this even be necessary? If someone wanted to start a war for oil or whatever their stupid fucking theory is, wouldn't the act of ramming two jets in the World Trade Towers and killing even a few hundred people be enough of a justification to act?


Cuz Bush is stoopid that's why! Also, shut up!

173 I wonder how O'Reilly will take this. Oh wait, Sharpton is on his show, too. And the racist, Marc Lamont Hill.

174 My favorite is their "facts" page. The #1 fact? Fire can't melt steel baby!
Posted by: booger at November 15, 2010 01:17 PM

I always have to ask, well, how do they get it in girder shapes, then?

175 Geraldo= Dumbshit.  There, everything explained.

176 **Cuz Bush is stoopid that's why! Also, shut up!** But planning for the WTC attacks started in May 2000, long before W was elected. It's obvious that the plan was hatched by Gore and Clinton.

177 George Bush is an "intellectually incurious", smirking chimp, cokehead, dumbass godbag, alcoholic mouthbreather. George Bush is also the most brilliant criminal mastermind the world has ever known, murdering thousands of his own citizens and cleverly convincing the Muslims to take credit for it so he could declare war on them because Halliburton. That liberals simultaneously hold both of these beliefs is all the proof you need to dismiss them as fucking idiots.

178 174
The best evidence that a rogue US Government did not knock down a bunch of buildings in NYC, killing thousands? The truther "researchers" who supposedly exposed this dastardly conspiracy are still alive.

As illustrated flawlessly by Maddox:

There is no 9/11 conspiracy, you morons. 

179 Forget physics for a moment.
Done and done.

180 Didn't they recently do a study that found that wandering minds were very unhappy people?  He must be miserable.

181 I thought this shit was settled years ago. Geraldo is capable of coming up with one ridiculous ratings ploy after another, and this is nothing but just another prime example of this tendency. Whether its Capone's vault, or Satanic Panic, or tracing out the movement of our troops in Iraq in the desert sand over live television, the guy doesn't give a crap about anything but attention.

I watched a seminar of 9/11 Truthers once that was broadcast by C-Span. All of them were without exception demonstrably disturbed on some emotional level and it showed, in the case of one guy you could tell by the glaze in his eyes. They are about on the level of people who believe hundreds of thousands of people have been abducted by aliens over the course of fifty years. They are both as grounded in reality as a child who invents an imaginary friend as a coping mechanism, except the child will in most cases grow out of it. It's too late for these nuts, and if Geraldo wanted to really do some groundbreaking journalism that might warrant respect and a possible journalistic award at some point, he might consider doing an intense study of these people with the aid of a genuine psychotherapist or psychiatrist.

But of course something like that would require time and effort, and patience, none of which lends itself to Geraldo's style of sensationalistic kick in the nuts "investigative" journalism.

182 Buildings fall straight down because they're built straight up. You think a 100-story building with code approval is going to look like a jenga game at half time?

183 More scientific evidence: my hat falls off when I try to suck on my own pee pee.

184

174 It's all part of the plot -- the questions shrouded in mystery and wrapped up in enigma...all leading back to what really is out there at Area 51.

When I become village warlord (or my husband takes that role, being the power behind the throne of skulls has its advantages) Truthers will be used as test subjects for some of their pet theories (admittedly, we may have to use other materials due to necessity and value of resources...but if they can use chicken wire instead of steel girders, so can I).

185 murdering thousands of his own citizens and cleverly convincing the Muslims to take credit for it so he could declare war on them because Halliburton.

George Bush: Hey, I'm going to kill a bunch of Americans in spectacular fashion, so I can send American troops after you and kick your asses.

Al Qaeda: Cool. What can we do to help?

186

I'm talking about a control. Like in a drug test-- a placebo control group alongside the actual group the drug is being tested on, to make sure that any effects are coming from the drug itself and not generally-existing factors.

What are you talking about?  This isn't the scientific method I thought I knew.

187 Somehow, I had a feeling that China would give us an answer to the "building falling over" question.

188 Paint chips are a good source of munerals.

189 Dear Truthers,

Fuck you.

Love,

UF

190 "Fire can't melt steel". That's right! We get all steel items from steel mines, where structural beams, and knives, and guns, and all other steel products emerge from the ground fully formed !!1!! I swear, the level of stupidity and ignorance, not to mention teh crazy, in the Truthers really scares me. They embrace the thought that their own government would willingly commit such an atrocity, but suggest that members of a certain religion may have been responsible, and they get the vapors.

191 Too many drugs.  And the residue from such in the environment.

And I ain't talkin' the legal stuff.

Seriously, has anyone done long-term studies on the stuff that was washing around in the '60s?  I mean serious stuff, studying children and grandchildren too...maybe that crap has created some lasting genetic damage or something, that's causing future generations to be teh tard?

Would explain a lot, if you think about it...

192 It's not that all leftists are truthers.  It's just that you have to be an idiot to believe in either set of nonsense, so there is some natural overlap.

193 It make perfect sense for Building seven to collapse at free fall if the bottom three floor had be "beamed" to the "ultra-terrestrial lair near the North Pole."

194 Troofers and their Warner Brothers physics make me feel stabby.

But arguing with them is pointless, because you can't reason someone out of a place they didn't reason themselves into.

Just brand them with the Scarlet "D" (for Dumbass) and move on.

195 What is even funnier about Trutherism is that even if you accept the premise of the psychosis, that Bush is evil and wanted to kill people and start a war, it still makes no sense.

The first Trade Center bomb was a bomb at the base of the structure, set by terrorists. And truthers think that this was repeated this time. So if evil Bush had done only what Truthers say they did, and blamed it on terrorists, even the Truthers would have had nothing odd to find.

So why hijack a plane at all and crash it into the building? Its hard to set up, and supposedly totally ineffective according to the Truthers. Why not have the evil bush minions just 'shoot trying to escape' the same 20 terrorists at the site to have someone to blame it on?

And why put any explosives inside of some crappy short building? Nobody cares whether it stood or fell because of debris landing on it, even now. Do they think that everyone would have said "Oh AlQueda just killed 10000 people but building 7 still stands. I guess we should just ignore the whole thing.

196 truthers are are liberals distilled to their crazy crazy essence. Take the inability to listen, inability to acknowledge a counter argument, and the utter lack of knowledge about what they're talking about and you've got yourself a truther.

197 Fire doesn't melt steel?

Then someone kindly explain to me how Welding works?

198 another thing, the gas burns at 800 degrees thing ignores that the mixture and rate of consumption can drive up the temperature of the process. See how your propane torch can go from yellow to red to blue flame depending on how much oxygen it gets by throttling the flame...or bellows on an anvil's fire. so infuriating, truthers are ignorant high school dropouts!

199 Unless the foundation fails and sinks on one side, I would expect a building to fail just like the towers did under the vast majority of circumstances.

The failure mode is very simple, and was probably already mentioned in the comments above.  Steel, as in the I-beams in a skyscraper, is heat-treated to give it strength.  One only need heat the steel to about half its melting temperature to remove the heat treatment, which could easily reduce its yield strength by half  (I cannot be sure of the exact amount of strength reduction, since I don't know what kind of steel they used to build the towers).  The safety factor would not take that much strength reduction into account.

Once one floor fails and falls, the additional load on the next floor(which probably already had weakened steel as well) would be sufficient to cause it to fail, and so on.  Once you got to a point where the steel hadn't been weakened by heat, the immense impact load of the falling floors would exceed the steel's load capability, and they would fail too.

Stuff only fails slowly in movies because it's dramatic.  One something has a failure load on it, it can fail very quickly.We saw that already when the towers fell.

200 Friend of mine believes the trufer theory, sad part is he worked in a steel mill.  When I asked him how you mad I-beams...well, there was that baffled crazy look and then the shouting commenced...I walk away laughing, telling him he's nutz.

201 Good point, idiot's reference point for things falling is 1. trees. 2. slow mo action movies. Think about the 110 stories, each pancaking down on the next layer, getting progressively heavier and faster with each floor. 80 hitting number 30, 81 hitting number 29, etc. no wonder the building was pulverising itself.

202 This is one of those situations where people just don't pay attention. The floors above the point on each building where the plans hit actually do tilt or fall slightly to the side as the building comes down. Of course as it's doing that, it's also falling straight down. it's quite obvious by the numerous video angles and makes complete sense based on where the planes hit. now when 1/3 of the building falls down on top of the rest of the building, you end up with the pancake effect.

203

#203

Exactly.  The steel need not 'melt' to have a collapse.  Once it starts to sag, it's over.  Which is long before it melts. 

The government can't keep secret 'prisons' for a few dozen terrorists, overseas.  But I'm supposed to believe the biggest conspiracy ever to mass murder thousands of Americans is airtight?

204

And by the by...Clyde, liberal arts major here, and I know the physics involved in a structural collapse -- of both trees and skyscrapers.  I can also use my liberal artsy mind to extrapolate a viewpoint that backs up my feeble grasp of physics -- it points to the Occam's Razor defense, which is that Muslim terrorists hijacked two jets, flew them into the towers, thus causing a physical chain reaction resulting in the collapse of the WTC buildings.

I do know some math and science majors at the closest colleges, who should have known better, that were taken in by the truther bullshit however.

Sadly, one's college degree, neither the type of degree nor ownership of the same, is not insurance against politically motivated wishful thinking and delusional ideology.

205

Maybe I've missed it, but it doesn't look as if anyone has mentioned the JREF 9/11 Conspiracies Forum, one of the best sites out there for giving Truthers a smackdown from a science, engineering, and rational-minded perspective.  Tony Szamboti has been eviscerated there on frequent occasions, and a quick search of their archives will turn up some great discussions of free-fall collapse speed offered by structural engineers and architects.  Today they're leading with a discussion of Szamboti's Geraldo appearance:

JREF 9/11 Forum

206 Maybe some of silent explosives were used. Controlled demolitions make noise not heard anywhere on 9/11 video. Watch ANY controlled demolition video and see if you can hear a sound like a steam locomotive the size of New Jersey chugging down the tracks. I'm so fucking tired of fucking idiots.

207 Excuse me people, Bush didn't use controlled demolition explosives. He used a ray beam weapon from Area 51 on the WTC and covered it up with the planes ramming the building. He then used it on New Orleans in 2005 and covered that up with a category 5 hurricane. He also travelled back in time and took out the Hindenburg and Titanic. He covered those up by blaming hydrogen (but HYDROGEN DOESN'T BURN) and an iceburg.

208

Also of note, JREF stalwart "Gravy" has a superb website debunking some of the Truther's more outlandish claims:

Links For 9/11 Research

209 second squared is acceleration, at 1 mile per second, you go a mile, right? at acceleration of 1 mile per second per second, your speed increases...so you go from 0 mps, to 1mps to 2mps, etc., your speed builds, and the distance travelled is exponential. it's a quadratic formula, distance = initial distance + intial speed times time of travel + 1/2(acceleration times time travelled) squared. from memory, but you get the drift. So, for gravity, you acceleated 32 feet per second per second, whatever that means means that the WTC were going fast after a 1000 feet of travel.

210 As someone who works in the Steel Industry, I can assure you, fire(or more specifically a source of immense heat) does in fact melt steel. Either that or Pittsburgh has been in on this "fire melting steel conspiracy" for the past 180 years.

Yup. I told my husband about the whole "fire doesn't melt steel" thing and he about pissed himself laughing. He said he'd like to invite Rosie and the other troofers to the steel mill where he sits and watches fire melt steel on a daily basis...

I'm embarrassed that some tool calling himself a mechanical engineer is parading around this stupid "theory" about how 9/11 looks like a controlled demolition.

211 Here's the thing -- you can tell what happened to a building by how it fell. Buildings that have the foundation or lower floors compromised fall over on their side, like the one in the counterexample. The rest of the building is in good shape, but the base is gone, so it stays intact on the way down. The ones that come straight down are the ones that have the structure compromised higher up. Like the WTC buildings. Controlled demolitions accomplish this by actually weakening the entire structure all the way up, drilling through support structures, knocking out walls, etc. So unless the truther fuckwits can show where there were construction crews with heavy equipment going through actually removing material from the buildings to weaken them then it had to be the other forces (you know, the two fucking planes and collapsing fucking towers) that did it. They didn't do it in secret in the basement, or the buildings would have fallen over, not down. And have you ever seen a controlled demolition that wasn't visible from outside the building? All of the ones I've seen had an unmistakable series of obviously designed flashes. None of that at the WTC.

212 211 But you missed the truth at the bottom of the shrouded, enigmatic mystery: which was that Bush did all those things, yes, but he was being mind-controlled by the Illuminati, who are really controlled by the Freemasons, who are really a secret jihadist sect that work for the Pope and the Jews (in their lair underneath the Temple Mount), who are themselves controlled by the Grand Dragon of the Bildeburgers -- and who happens to be Dick Cheney.

213 You think a 100-story building with code approval is going to look like a jenga game at half time?

"A jenga game at half time" is a decent description for many of the newer crop of art museums springing up, but none of them are 100 stories either.

Regarding 9/11, the even more unbelievable thing than Bush somehow keeping it a secret is the concept of Obama not constantly slamming Bush about it the second he took office and was briefed on the conspiracy.

214 I absolutely despise these people.  Every single one of them should be dropped into a NYPD or NYFF staff room to spout their crap there.  Then let the beatings commence.  I am sick and tired of their BS.  They understand nothing, have no concept of physics, and absolutely no shame!

215 Watch your back, unknown jane, only a few know the truth.

216 9/11 Troofers honestly don't care about logic or truth.  They loathe America and all it stands for, and that is the sole motivation driving them. 

217 fire don't melt steel because they think that, oh, a flame is 830 degrees or whatever. They don't know that fuel can continue to add heat as more of it burns. It's like saying ice freezes at 32 degrees and therefore ice at 31 degrees doesn't exist.

218 9/11 Troofers espouse their theories because, like all Liberals, the only thing they know how to say is a lie.  They lie to each other and to us constantly, so much so that they are no longer conscious of doing so.

Naturally, they are attracted to great big lies just like the ones they parrot.  9/11 conspiracies, global warming, etc etc. etc.

219 I like the cut of this guy's jib.

220 when did Cheney get promoted up to grand dragon, I'll have to send a card.

221 Had a buddy (or a few buddies actually) go Troofer.
I've seen some of their sources of evidence, which are deliberately misleading, and pointed out parts where important information was left out. The answer is usually "yeah, ok, but what about ..." rather than "why is this source leaving out details that completely change the tone of the text?"

222 If that "mechanical engineer" has a background in structural egineeering in skycrapers built with a certain "era" of technology AND he writes persuasive paper including models that demonstrates what he is saying AND it is peer reviewed and published AND his results are replicated by others...well alright Maybe his conclusions mean something. But when he goes on Fox news and says to Geraldo, "I'm a mechanical Engineer" + "X is impossible" then who gives a damn? Mechanical engineers can be wrong about stuff. They can have some funny ideas that don't stand up to scrutiny or reality. That's why they are expected to be very rigorous and thorough about their reasoning when they publish things or do professional work and are expected to demonstrate that their theoretical understanding actually WORKS the way they say it does. If they say that some cracks they found will be and issue causing a part or structure to be scrapped then they need to prove it. If they say that cracks are NOT an issue and that the part is fine then they need to prove that too. He needs to put his academic and experimental rigor and his professional reputation where his mouth is and accept any criticisms or debunkings that come along and then admit that he made errors and use that to refine or abandon his theory. If he doesn't do all that then his being a mechanical engineer is by itself of no use to establishing the truth of his claims and he might as well have not said or done anything at all.

223 Sadly, one's college degree, neither the type of degree nor ownership of the same, is not insurance against politically motivated wishful thinking and delusional ideology. Posted by: unknown jane at November 15, 2010 02:29 PM Yep. I worked with a few designers and engineers who were avowed communists, and some of whom were Truthers. The common thread among them, though, was that, in most cases, they were coming at the issues emotionally, instead of coming at them analytically. They were allowing their emotional opinions to trump their rational, analytical side. So, yeah, it's not as simple to say that all analytical people will look at it one way and all 'artsy' people will look at it another. However, in a general sense, that was the case I found in both college and in my working environments.

224 It's definitely possible, under a number of circumstances, most of which involve serious amounts of corruption in the building inspectors' offices.  As someone else said earlier, of course it will look like a controlled demolition.  Professionals are going to use gravity as their primary tool.  All the building needs is a bit of a push to get started (and debris from an adjacent 101 story building should be sufficient push, and the floors start pancaking because each subsequent lower support is now having to support the weight of all the floors above when their support is crushed. Here's another example of a sideways building fall from the Phillipines. http://tinyurl.com/2a8es5a Again, poor workmanship and no inspection led to this.

225 We don't trust a mechanical engineer to instinctively know how everything works. We do trust him or her to try and find out how something works provided he or she is very thorough and objective enough to test his or her own beliefs and to tell us when he or she was wrong so we don't approve FUBAR projects that end in disaster.

226 224 Dude...he was born into it!  Just like he was born into his position as the real Dalai Lama (oh no, I've said too much haven't I?)

227 **"That is impossible because, in a natural collapse, columns would have to buckle," he said. "When columns buckle, there is a minimum resistance. ... It would slow down."*** That is, the ME on Geraldo was used to say that the building fell too fast. The pancaking freighttrain would override and overpower each successive floor, practically obliterating the floor below it. Each floor gets hit harder and faster because there's another story of acceleration and a story of mass added to the free fall. The MechEng adds nothing, he's wrong. He's stating a conclusion, not a fact.

228 227 And that illustrates the dangers of generalized thinking; trust me, not all of us liberal arts types are progressive emo-tards and Code Pinkos (for one thing their fashion sense is atrocious -- so no thank you).

229 It's important to point out that the examples of buildings which have toppled over like lego towers seem to be mostly, if not all, cases in which the building foundation was seriously affected (e.g., earthquakes, soil erosion).  This was not the case with the WTC, where the force of gravity crushing the building downward seems to have outweighed any lateral forces.

Oh, and to corroborate Ace's thesis on the alleged plausibility of the "controlled demolition" idea, I distinctly remember people all over, on tv and off, rationalizing the destruction of the tower and saying without a shred of evidence for liklihood that things could have been worse since the towers could have fallen over sideways and done even more damage.  Well, it's a consoling thought to think that way, which explains why that possibility is an unquestioned assumption. But no one investigated whether that was ever a real possibility.  It just made the tragedy seem a bit more humane that we could imagine a worse outcome, irrespective of its liklihood.

230 Bush, when the towers fell.

231

So basically part of the conspiracy was to bring down Building 7 at the World Trade Center ten hours after the initial impact, because the conspirators "knew" that 3000 deaths and the collapse of two of the most famous buildings in America wasn't "enough" to get America to sign off on an invasion of Afghanistan.

They needed to be goaded over the edge by the that final, shocking no casualty collapse of a run of the mill office building.  Well, I'm convinced

232 Fire doesn't melt Steel!  PERIOD!!!!

Everyone knows swords are made by magic.

233 234 Bush, when the towers fell.

Posted by: Obscure Star Trek referenceotron at November 15, 2010 03:34 PM (6fER6)

Bush and Cheney at Tanagra.

234 The WTC collapse like a tree thing may make sense if one were to obliterate a sector of its base. Of course, we aren't structural engineers. It may be that even if (assuming a four quadrant support arrangement, like 4 squares forming a square) that if all but 1 of the 4 were destroyed, the WTC was still designed to brace itslf such that it didn't fall like a tree but collapse straught down. I think we need to get Laurie David to weigh in on this

235 Jane, join us....

236 Do they have a single recorded case of this happening in the real world? That is, not involving a Lego tower, but a real tower in the real world toppling over to its side like a giant domino?

Does the movie 2012 count? 

237 They needed to be goaded over the edge by the that final, shocking no casualty collapse of a run of the mill office building.  Well, I'm convinced

An office building with enough diesel fuel tanks to run the Canadian army for a year, no less.  (Actually they were for backup generators for the phone company, IIRC).  It's *shocking* that a fire there got out of control.

Also of note, WTC7 is the only building of the WTC complex to have been rebuilt and be open for business again.  Private free enterprise > government bumbling.

238 wait, how did *they* know that we wouldn't immediately surrender?

239 The great thing about conspiracy theories - if you espouse them - is that anyone who tries to debunk them immediately becomes part of the conspiracy; therefore they are impossible to refute because they are not really factual theories, they are articles of faith.

240

The tipped building in Shanghai is not at all comparable to the World Trade Center, which had 110 floors, each of which had a footprint of an acre. And each floor was three-foot-thick concrete.

There has been no collapse of any building comparable to the WTC. So far it is a one-off event.

241 I loathe truthers with a white hot passion. Indeed, I don't particularly hate anything, but terrorists and truther enablers. Yeah, I don't like them.

242 Oh, sorry - the concrete on the floors was four inch slab.

243 technically, it was the "event" happened twice. and each one fell the same way.

244 This is as bad as the "Loose Change" report that said "OMG Look the at the graph that says the building fell in 3 seconds with only one big rumble, it was an explosion", but what they failed to tell everyone was that they squeezed the Richter scale readings into a small graph that made it look like there was a large explosion during the fall, when stretched out you see the graph actually encompasses 10 seconds or so with no explosions, but a gradual heightening in vibration as the building came down completely. This is all typical troofer propaganda and lies. Also why a mechanical engineer? While I'm sure they have physics knowledge this really is nowhere near their area of expertise. Why not get a chemical engineer? Or a home decorator? Again another troofer tactic, find someone who seems credible and would seem hard to dispute. They used fireman to say they heard bombs going off and smelled C4, while NYC fireman are the best, I don't remember too many cases, if any, where NYC fireman would be around C4 to know what it smelled like (if he was in the military and knew from there they left it out, which would have helped their cause, so its safe to say he wasn't) They also tried to use maintenance men as "experts" on demolition and explosives. In full disclosure I was part of the conspiracy to begin with, all us 17 year old NJ high School students at the time were, Dick Chenney came to visit us and asked us how to get his mission done, so we helped out. Well it was either our plan or maybe the Mooslims plan.

245

Obviously the Mysterious Conspirators threw their Cloak of Invisibility over themselves as they tore away walls over the months to wire their explosives so that none of the thousands of people working there might notice Big Sticks of Dynamite attached to the girder next to the coffee machine.  And then afterwards, they cleaned up every trace of wire, blasting caps, and dynamite from every bit of rubble to keep the secret safe.  And they slammed those jets into the World Trade Center as a diversion to the real demolition in WTC 7.

And hey, I've chewed through my leather head restraint and unbuckled one of the buckles on my straightjacket.  That proves how right I am.

246

I know that lots of Truthers feel that buildings need to fall like trees, excepting for the cases where there is a "controlled demolition".

But, has anyone ever seen a controlled demolition of a tree?

You know....where it came straight down on itself?

 

247

51 Folks, treat stories like this like you treat trolls. Ignore them.

How'd that work for the JFK conspiracy theories?  Not so well, I think.  Kids with tapioca for brains think Oliver Stone's "JFK" is a freaking documentary.  If conspiracy theories are not inundated with ridicule and set alight, they become popular wisdom.

248 Sure, gravity pulls these buildings straight down but how do we know there is only one kind of gravity?  Maybe there is another kind of gravity that pulls buildings SIDEWISE, an EVIL gravity developed in government labs. 

249 actually, I think the more likely thing to happen would be for the cap of the building to "slide off" and fall to the ground. So, for the top explosion and fire, an imbalance would cause smooshing and sliding to the side. But there wasn't a force powerful enough in the fall to push it to the side.

250

Here's a possibility for the Truthers -- 95% of all buildings which collapse will pancake down, one floor collapsing on to the next, just like the 9/11 buildings, whether brought down by controlled demolition or non-controlled unexpected demolition, because that is how these things tend to collapse.

They lack a contrary case -- that is, in their stupid little minds they are thinking that most buildings brought down by uncontrolled explosions topple over like Lego towers, falling over to their sides (and knocking over the dinosaur toys right next to them). Thus, any building that pancakes must be brought down by controlled demolition.

 

This is what the first WTC terrorist attck tried, and failed, to do. I don't know what I'm more sick and tired of, terrorists or Truthers.

251 Yeah, this was a dark, impenetrable conspiracy inflicted upon us by the U.S. Government.  Right.  The same U.S. Government that created the Post Office, Amtrak, and Fannie Mae.   So how could ANY organization so flamingly incompetent have attempted anything like this AND NOT DICK IT UP? 

252 wait, did they actually use legos? oy vay!

253 There is debris falling beside the tower faster than the tower is falling. If the tower is falling at "1 g" then what is accelerating the debris?

254 gee, there's the mechanical engineer's deceleration. The WTC's getting smooshed by the falling floors which provides some resistance the pulversized debris is only getting air resistance. The two fall slightly differently. I bet the terminal velocity of the WTC main structure is way higher than the dust though.

255 Once it starts to sag, it's over.
Yeah. Tell it to my dick.

256 For a structure to topple over, some force has to push it sideways. Taking away support on one side can do that. Take a shoebox. Stand it on end, supported by two fairly thick books, one to each side. Pull out one book - the box will topple in that direction (if over half the weight is now unsupported). This works because the box has a high strength-to-weight ratio. It's sufficiently rigid that the unsupported side doesn't just sag straight down; instead it tugs the other side over. The pivot is where the box meets the edge of the remaining book. The whole weight of the box is borne by that line in its bottom end. But a large building has a much lower strength-to-weight ratio: about like damp cardboard. We think of stone or metal as hard and rigid - but when loads of thousands or millions of tons are applied, stone and metal flow, bend, and rip. Cut the support from under one side of a buiilding, and that side moves down, tugging on the other side - but instead of pulling that other side over, it simply rips the structure apart. There's really very little horizontal tensile strength in a building - not much is needed. As stuff comes apart, it falls down. Straight down, with minor exceptions like the ejected stuff that smashed into WTC 7.

257 ***but instead of pulling that other side over, it simply rips the structure apart.*** winner. Yeah, that explains the Oklahoma City building, the side collapsed, not the building. This is the difference between the tree and the building models. The tree has to tip because it's solid, maybe the 1993 bomb would collapsed the side of the bldg too. Not a tip over but a landslide. The end result would've been a knife edge remaining in a pool of rubble.

258 62
Why do Leftists believe in the worst and most evil government conspiracies?

pay attention now...

BECAUSE THIS IS WHAT THEY WOULD DO IF THEY COULD.

Posted by: Senator Soothsayer (R-AoS) at November 15, 2010 12:40 PM (uFokq)

This needs to be repeated many, many times a day. 

259 I love how during the time that literally thousands of charges are supposedly placed on support columns and miles of detonation cable run through three most likely fully-occupied office buildings in the middle of Manhattan, nobody noticed ANYTHING. No maintenance personnel saw any new devices or cable bundles. No janitor saw people rolling in handtrucks full of shaped charges or spools of detonator wire for months beforehand. No OCD officeworker noticed anything disturbed on their desks. Wow -- the conspiracy expands, if you're a troofer. Not to mention that according to Army FM publications on demolition, detonators are unstable around radio transmitters and there were hundreds of thousands of kilowatts being pounded out from antennas on top of the WTC buildings 24/7 while the devices were supposedly being set. Thousands of detonators and no premature detonations? Wow, that's really lucky I guess. It would take professional implosion companies months to wire one WTC tower were it stripped to the drywall. We are talking well over a year to wire three unoccupied buildings without concern of discovery or having to move conduits or existing equipment to place charges accurately -- which puts the start of the conspiracy and active planting of charges in the Clinton administration years. And then, once you have all the charges wired and circuits tested, there is the circus stunt of flying planes into the building, hitting precisely the right spots to avoid premature detonation of any of the precision-timed explosives needed to bring down the building. Occam's Razor says the most simple thing is that what happened is what happened. There is not human organization that is that good. The odds of completing that cycle without any mishaps involves numbers against used only to describe the size of the universe. CIA? Don't make me laugh. An organization that couldn't kill Castro, can't find Bin Laden, failed to predict the fall of the Soviet Union and Saddam's nuclear plan progress prior to the first Gulf War is incapable of that level of competence. Nobody else is, either. I don't need engineering, I just need odds. Odds are so heavily against the Troofers that it's not worth talking about.

260 The WTC, overall, was structurally a cantilever tube with core (which provided vertical support only) - in essence a thousand foot tall square pipe made up of many individual columns, but acting as one, anchored to the ground to resist wind loads

WTC Toppling vs. Pancaking

P-Delta (google it Rosie)

In this case we have 110 short columns laterally braced by floor support members.

Were the overall building, or part of it, be pushed to topple it, exterior support columns between floors would buckle dropping all floors above onto the floor below. Which is what appears to occur in the early seconds of the collapse.

However, driving factor in this collapse is that the floor support members are designed to support their own dead load plus live load. Failure of support members (due to excess heat) of one floor would dump its dead and live load onto the floor below, from there to the floor below, and so on and so forth...

Loss of a number of floor support members would increases the distance between laterally bracing for the exterior columns above the lowest failed floor - resulting in column buckling above the failed floor supports. As each floor briefly sagged before failure it would pull the exterior columns inward.

261 He should lose his job over entertaining Trutherism.  Foxnews should have higher standards than that.

262 What the Popular Mechanics article joncelli referred to (#7) didn't say was that each floor of the World Trade Center had a solid concrete floor that was supported only by the outside walls and the center column.  This left each floor wide open and made it easy to design offices and other things.

When the first floor came loose and fell to the second floor, the second floor held it for a while, then the second floor broke loose and started the chain reaction.

Since each floor was a solid block of concrete, when two of them came together, the air had now place to go but outward and out the small center column.  Thus the sudden rush of air out of each floor as it collapses.

Anyone who comes to ANY conclusion before ALL of the facts are learned about an incident have told others that they can't be trusted.  Learn which of your friends and associates do this and remember that they might have a reason for what they are trying to convince you of when they tell you about something.

263 Also it's assumed the Towers were brought down, by Truthers, to effect a war. Why would 7 have been brought down? Did they they think people would balk at going to war unless we had 3 buildings down?

Here's my conspiracy theory: After the Truthers got debunked to hell and back on Towers 1 and 2, they looked at Tower 7 and said to themselves, "Gosh, it's really unlikely that this Tower would also collapse even though it wasn't directly hit. Therefore, the only logical explanation is that IT'S A CONSPIRACY!!!!!"

The Truthers then proceeded to ignore all logic and reason in favor of a grandiose tale of Rudolph Giuliani stealing eighty billion tons of gold from the seeecret underground vault of the Tower, or whatever kick they're on. Hey, I guess it's an entertaining story, moreso than the dry, uninteresting story of what actually happened. Might even make a good Oliver Stone flick--well, if such a thing were possible.

But really, these Truthers? And conspiracy freaks like them? They're just the modern-day equivalent of people making up fanciful myths to explain what they don't understand, like myths supposing that lightning is hurled down to Earth by this or that God.

264

Okay, just a few quick points from a structural engineer who has been managing construction for the last 10 years.

 

1.)  The arguments that un-augmented (ie, not oxygen-enriched) fire doesnÂ’t melt steel are actually correct..  It doesnÂ’t get hot enough to actually melt it into liquid, and IÂ’m sure that is the fact that they are touting as being the big “gotcha” here.  However, what they donÂ’t understand is that fire doesnÂ’t have to melt steel for it to loose its strength.  Steel goes limp as a noodle waaaaay before its melting point, losing all structural integrity at about half way to melting – a temperature which any fire, even one burning only office supplies and carpet could easily reach.

 

2.)  Building 7 didnÂ’t fall at free-fall.  That is a lie.  It is a total of a couple of seconds off of free-fall.  Besides, I fail to see how even if it DID fall at free fall, how that is proof of a planned demolition – even in a planned demolition, those columns heÂ’s talking about would still be there!  No planned demolition falls at free-fall, either, so I fail to see how even IF it were true, that this would be relevant at all.  

 

3.)  The building shown toppled over is a monolithic cast-in-place concrete structure – far different from these moment-connected steel framed structures which we are discussing when we talk about 9/11.  Steel framed structures that are compromised on one side will tilt in that direction until the bending forces put on connections intended only for compression (ie, straight down forces of gravity) cause them to fail, and then the building will collapse in on itself.  Contrary to popular belief, the WTC towers didnÂ’t fall within their footprints.  The tops of tower 2 leaned over quite a ways before it collapsed on itself, and pieces of it hit ground blocks away.  

 

4.)  I still donÂ’t understand how Building 7 falls under this conspiracy theory.  The fact that it came down is all that keeps these conspiracy theories above water, and yet you have hundreds of forensic engineers the world over saying that they are surprised, given the level of damage that it took from ejecta from the towers coming down, that it took as long as it did to fall.  The thing was totally undermined by the towers coming down, and was on fire for a long time.

 

5.)  They are correct that no fire has ever brought down a skyscraper.  However, warehouse fires have toppled steel framed warehouses all over the world.  The reason no skyscraper has ever come down because of fire is two-fold.  One, weÂ’ve been terribly lucky.  And two, these buildings have advanced fire-suppression systems that usually keep fires from getting out of control.  There is a reason that all building codes ban the use of exposed steel in buildings without fire-protective coatings (either cementitious or intumescent), and it is because steel is more susceptible to fire damage than even wood is.  

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