Here is the time to collapse analysis I promised.

As you can see, when you factor in the resistance of the floors, and the loss of the gravitational energy required to pulverize millions (?) of tonnes of concrete, the total time to collapse is substantially higher than the near free fall collapse that anyone with eyes, and a cheap watch, can see for themselves.

2.5 Resisted fall

All of the above has been for an imaginary building in which none of the supporting columns provide any resistance at all. They either are nonexistent or they behave something like toothpicks. Here I will do a computation which attempts to include resistance from the supporting columns. Thus the analysis is linked to WTC1 rather than the idealized tower of floating Floors. This computation was suggested to me by Nic

Dudzik. Finding the time to collapse from a knowledge of the remaining non crushed mass will not be so easy in this context but this approach will give a means for including the resistance of the columns as well as variations in mass of a given length of column from the top to the bottom of the tower. It is known that the columns were less massive at the top than at the bottom.

snip...

r 1 .99 .98 .97 .96 .95 .9 .8

Total mass 89 54 35 25 18.8 15 7.1 3.5

Time to collapse 16.6 17.7 19 20.4 22 22.6 31.6 45.8

(table is a mess, damn Salon!, sorry, please see original)

One should also add about one second to these figures to obtain the total time to collapse because thecomputations do not calculate for the collapse of the top 16 floors. Clearly, fall times of over 25 se conds are expected with reasonable assumptions, yet the observed fall time for the Tower is less than that. For this table, a very conservative safety factor of 2 was used. This factor can be as large as 5 as explained above. You can see that if a larger safety factor were used, the building would not collapse completely because the

downward force would be less than the upward force. That result is consistent with the prediction of Gordon Ross in his analysis which concluded that the fall of the North Tower should have been arrested with much of the lower portion of the Tower remaining standing. Videos of the falling building suggest the columns punched through the floors or else were flung away from the progressive collisions between floors. This is illustrated by pictures of the collapse in which beams

are seen falling outside of the building and the fact that the central columns remained standing shortly after the collapse. Therefore, the above analysis may not be entirely pertinent to the manner of collapse of the building but it is nevertheless, another computation which indicates the time to collapse of the actual building was surprisingly short.

http://www.journalof911studies.com/letters/ProfKuttlerWTC1CollapseTimeCalculations.pdf

Unfortunately for me, the maths used by Prof. Kutler are about 110 stories over my head, so I have to take his calculations on faith; never a good idea. OTOH I am not aware of anyone who can do maths substantially challenging his sums.

I wasn't saying the NIST report was not a put up job, it was. My point was that when they talk about facts like the type of steel that sort of thing, it is probably true.

Have you seen this one? A Japanese MP that you could have a sake with and probably never call him a c__t even once! He's not buying it either, and in Parliament mind you. Can you imagine the reception this guy would get in the Congress?

http://video.google.ca/videosearch?hl=en&safe=off&rlz=1B3GGGL_enCA318CA318&q=youtube+911+guy+knows+everything+even+though+it+just+happened&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=y9bgSuOPI4iQtgeixI3vDA&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&ct=title&resnum=10&ved=0CDMQqwQwCQ#q=911+explanation+bystander&hl=en&emb=0

First of all, I have no firm opinion on this question. The preponderance of evidence seems to point to warming. I understand that the models we use today are, obviously, much better than they were even a few years ago.

Here is what I know. My dad, who is 92, used to skate on Halifax Harbour. In my lifetime I have never seen ANY ice on the harbour. When I was a kid, we could skate on frozen lakes 3-4 months a year. Nowadays, the lakes there rarely freeze solid enough to skate on.

My mother, who grew up in PEI in the 30's used to tell me that the snow drifts would go nearly to the top of the telephone poles. That just doesn't happy anymore. Even when I was a kid I remember a lot more snow than we get today.

My Inuk friends are very worried, they see plants, insects and animals they have never seen before, and some years they can't get out on the sea ice at all, as it is too dangerous. The permafrost has proven not to be so perma after all.

Yeah, it's all anecdotal, and that is why I make no grand pronouncements.

And maybe this winter will be cold or colder, but isn't that weather, not climate?