One, I applaud you on your research. But as the paper deals directly with NIST and the collapse of the buildings, I find it difficult to accept the paper at all as you are not qualified. See, Ryan, you are not a structural engineer. And according to debunking standards, unless you are a structural engineer you are unqualified to support or to critique NIST itself or any critique by another party.
But since I thought I would find the same debunking nonsense, I will point out a couple of errors in your paper already.
As we can plainly see, Mr. Robertson does not support Dr. Griffin’s assertions. He suggests that the WTC Towers were designed to handle a 707 impact, but that the actual requirement stipulated a much lower speed collision, with “absolutely no comparison” between the requirement and the actual events of September 11th. Mr. Robertson also indicates that a thorough analysis would have been impossible with the tools of the time. It also bears pointing out that his firm LERA was a contributor to the NIST report, rather than disputing it, as Dr. Griffin suggests.
You may want to update your research in order revise this first error. The speed of that 707 was 600mph not a "lower speed". Oh and the source for displaying your error: NIST NCSTAR 1-2, WTC Investigation Appendix A Draft For Public Comment. Perhaps in your next revision you can correct Mr. Robertson's thinking instead of accepting this obvious error.
To my knowledge, Mr. Skilling has never claimed that the Towers would remain standing indefinitely, particularly given the fires and the impossibility of fighting them.
Impossibility? LOL. Your kidding right? If it were impossible to fight the fires, why did firefighters travel into the towers and up the stairs and mention small pockets of fire that would be attacked? As a diligent researcher, I'm surprised to hear you state that fighting the fires was an impossibility.
And lets see what Mr. Skilling stated about his buildings and their behavior after an impact with a jetliner:
"Our analysis indicated the biggest problem would be the fact that all the fuel (from the airplane) would dump into the building. There would be a horrendous fire. A lot of people would be killed," he said.
"The building structure would still be there."
So even after a crash, and the fire, the designer states the building would still be there. Let me repeat, the building would still be there. He doesn't state, the building would be there for just a couple of hours and then collapse or that the structure would eventually fail. Of course in your statement you then qualify your lack of knowledge into " Even if he has, there are no calculations given in support." This has to be the first time I've seen a debunker disagree with the head structural engineer of the Towers because of the lack of calculations, but accept NIST's work with the same lack of calculations in regards to other events in the towers.
Not only that in the segment above, you accept Mr. Robertson's statements...without calculations! ROFLMAO!
Don't you think Mr. Skilling is qualified to make that statement about his own building considering the amount of air traffic surrounding NYC?
Besides, how can you honestly state there are no calculations? What mystical powers helped you arrive at that conclusion? Just because you haven't seen them, doesn't mean they don't exist.
This ends all debates whether or not the designers took into consideration the impact of planes and fires on their structures.
But what relevant statements did Skilling provide about his towers?
"However," he added, "I'm not saying that properly applied explosives - shaped explosives - of that magnitude could not do a tremendous amount of damage."
"I would imagine that if you took the top expert in that type of work and gave him the assignment of bringing these buildings down with explosives, I would bet that he could do it."-John Skilling Seattle Times 1993
Does this favor a controlled demolition scenario in the destruction of the towers as opposed to planes and fires? I think so.
I could repost some of your lies and bad logic that I've encountered before here at JREF, but for the sake of kindness I will not. I do look forward to reading more of this "Debunking" work, however.
I put it up in both Word and PDF formats for people to choose.
