Bastardi on the non-existent climate-tornado linkage

Global (or nearly global) cooling is one of the root causes.
Viva la Edad del Hielo!
http://www.dgcs.unam.mx/boletin/bdboletin/2011_085.html

If that item had run another minute or two, I am certain that Joe would have “lost it” completely, and delivered an anti-warmist rant for the ages.
Maybe, next time (:-

Everyone here, must identify, with the obvious frustration, emoted by JB. All skeptics have this one thing in common! We vary in everything else. GK

Seeing how 1970 thru 2000 was the warming cycle and that the cooling cycle 2000 thru 2030 is here, what else can you expect. Here in Western Oregon I expect to start shoveling snow in about ten years or so in the good old winter time. It will seem like old times just like in the 1960’s removing snow from the sidewalks in front of the family drug store.

Bublhead says:
June 3, 2011 at 11:13 am
I watched that clip twice and still can’t find any thing resembling a refutation of the science behind global warming in what he said.
———————————-
I’ve read reviews of all the papers if not the papers themselves on global warming, read the IPCC reports and followed the debate closely for four years now and I’ve never seen affirmation of the theory of global warming.
I am not alone.

Rosie is certainly incorrect about global warming causing tornadoes. However, she is absolutely correct when she states that fires cannot melt steel, so that they flow like rivers, as noted by WTC structural engineer Leslie Robertson:

Office fires, even those induced by jet fuel, cannot produce these results.

Bulbhead
He wont even click on them sorry that’s the way da AGW brain works

Bublhead says:
June 3, 2011 at 11:13 am
===================================
Anyone that can read a chart knows that sea level rise has slowed, it’s obvious that temperatures have declined since 1998, there is no tropospheric hot spot…etc etc
All the while CO2 levels have increased (saying they are historically high is just hysterics) but they are Hansen’s A.
How do you explain it without refuting the basic premises of Global Warming.

Bublehead! Nothing you have said shows anything more than your ability to toe the company line! And if CO2 is behind the CURRENT warming trend, please, oh please explain why it ISN’T behind other similar warming trends in the past, and why this “trend” is so, um, special. Please explain also why and how global warming is responsible for the twister outbreak this year, but (and this is a big but) not in previous years, especially seing how global warming has been getting worse since say, 2000 AD. Shouldn’t the twisters be steadily increasing? Oh…right, there’s that ‘tipping point’ thing…and when did that happen? The thing is, B’head, you cannot explain this, because you don’t grasp the physical significance of tornado formation. You assert that Bastardi hasn’t disproved anything, while in the same breath, you have not proved anything. “Creative” cut-and-paste is not going to win any arguments here. To assign the garbage-dump term “global warming” (in itself an effect) as a cause, is worthy of Rosie O’Donnell, but not a scientific forum.

curious, that post really belonged in Tips and Notes, I think. But I note that the sponsors are notorious Democrats, from Feinstein to Franken. No way it passes the House.

Bublhead says:
June 3, 2011 at 11:13 am
I watched that clip twice and still can’t find any thing resembling a refutation of the science behind global warming in what he said.
Perhaps that could be because he was not trying to refute the entire concept of AGW in this interview, but merely to counter the absurd notion that this Spring’s tornado outbreaks were the result of AGW or any other kind of warming. It’s sometimes hard to refute a hypothesis, when its proponents claim every possible result as falling within their projections, but such an argument tends to leave them looking like Harold Camping after a while.

Fred from Canuckistan says:
June 3, 2011 at 11:39 am
“I have it on good authority that global warming caused Rosie O’Donnell.”
Fred,
As we all know correlation does not equal causation.
Pablo

Sorry to contradict you and the estimable Rosie Whoever, but steel can be melted like that in an office fire. It all depends on length of exposure, ventilation and the local heat feedbackplus the size of the fire and the structure, of course. Just because it is rare, does not mean it “can’t happen.” It is rare, but it was also noted after the fire storms that destroyed Hamburg and Dresden to name just two.
Let’s not get into the 9/11 was all an internal plot to justify the war on terror.
Look into the ‘models’ used to support the “Warming” panic – they use surface temperatures, but they also only model the lower atmosphere as far as I am aware and they don’t do anything with oceans (also part of the atmosphere) or the upper atmosphere and they certainly don’t predict tornadoes. Hollywood has a lot to answer for in clouding this debate.

They used to laugh at the idea that every company needed qualified computer geeks.
Today people laugh at the importance of unbiased and objective meteorologists, still. With the state of the globality of the global world, and it’s only going to get more “global”, but would anyone, today, really want to invest in even a single shipment of goods if we didn’t have objectively interpreted weather data for the shipping time? But who would you trust: The unbiased weather man working for whom ever or the “insurance company’s own weather man”?

thereisnofear says:
June 3, 2011 at 11:31 am
You are right. Any structural engineer will tell you that no office or hydrocarbon fire can melt steel alone. Given that the tower fires were oxygen poor (i.e. lots of black smoke), the temperature of the flames were no where close to weakening and even less close to melting structural steel.
Because science teaches us not to trust the government about Climate Change, the same science also tells us not to believe their fairy tale report on the way those towers collapsed. You can’t cherry-pick science.

thereisnofear says:
Office fires, even those induced by jet fuel, cannot produce these results.
Do you know what a cupola furnace is? It is a vertical shaft that is filled with layers with wood charcoal and iron fragments. After the charcoal is lit and allowed to heat up, a taphole is opened up and *molten* iron flows out. That’s right, iron is melted wood fire – pretty much common knowledge since the dawn of the iron age. With regards to the melting of steel, the difference between a small cupola filled with charcoal, and skyscraper filled with jet fuel is only a matter of scale.

I have it under excellent authority that Rosie O’Donnell breathes out over 40,000 PPM of CO2 with every breath. Perhaps she could do something to contribute to her perceived need to decrease global atmospheric CO2 levels and stop breathing out so much.

Re Smokey says:
June 3, 2011 at 11:29 am
Many thanks for the “clicks”. I can use the charts to good effect – well, show /discuss them anyway, but warmista are very resistant. Gotta keep on keeping on tho.
Will send to my MP (Member of Parliament). inter alios. UK Govt. quite nuts on Climate Change, unfortunately, and on windmills as one of the key solutions.

Rosie is a poster child for stupidity. You can go on youtube and see a tanker truck fire melt the steel support structure on the roadway above where it crashed. video

Bublhead says:
June 3, 2011 at 11:13 am
The think about snowing cheese might be clever, but it isn’t really a scientific statement. And nothing even vaguely scientific that he did say in any way refutes the basic premises of Global Warming.

You expected scientific statements of fact on a 24-hour televised news channel? Did you just get off the alien spacecraft?

Bublhead says:
June 3, 2011 at 11:13 am
So Joe did not refute Global warming in a two minute explanation of how and why there are tornadoes now (as there have been in the past).
But I am so glad that you did not find anything strange about Rosie O’Donnell, explaining how Global Warming is the only reason for having the tornadoes.
sarc And obviously she is all knowing and can prove that tornadoes like these never happened before we started pumping CO2 into the atmosphere a little over 100 years ago. /sarc

Gunny says:
June 3, 2011 at 12:37 pm
thereisnofear says:
Office fires, even those induced by jet fuel, cannot produce these results.
“Do you know what a cupola furnace is? It is a vertical shaft that is filled with layers with wood charcoal and iron fragments. After the charcoal is lit and allowed to heat up, a taphole is opened up and *molten* iron flows out. That’s right, iron is melted by wood fire – pretty much common knowledge since the dawn of the iron age. With regards to the melting of steel, the difference between a small cupola filled with charcoal, and skyscraper filled with jet fuel is only a matter of scale.”
No! This can’t be true! No one melted iron before there were acetylene torches! /sarc 🙂

Tornadoes are caused by cold northern air meeting warm southern air. The reason for all of the tornadoes this year is because there has been an enormous mass of cool air covering the American north-west.
So Rosie is basically arguing that global warming caused this mass of cool air.

Bublhead says:
June 3, 2011 at 11:13 am
“The fact that mid level atmospheric temperatures has dropped recently neither proves nor disproves global warming.”
Thank you, Bublhead for providing another example of the unscientific “method” ipcc Climate Science uses to protect its “theory”: in practice it will simply not let its CO2=CAGW theory be challenged or falsified. Therefore, its theory is not a scientific theory, and in fact it says nothing about the real world!
The “theory’s” function is Dogmatic or Propagandistic, where the “theory” appears by its linguistic structure to be scientific or assertional as to fact, but in regard to its actual function as allowed by its authors, it is not.
ipcc Climate Science’s “method” also resembles that of an Infantile mind which contents itself with repetitive, “No, you can’t make me,” chants. That’s its strength and appeal.
Right, Bublhead?

NikfromNYC,
Please re-read what I wrote. I agree that Rosie gets it wrong about tornadoes. I am thoroughly skeptical about the AGW hypothesis. I take that position because it is scientifically problematic. I prefer to stick to demonstrable scientific fact. Ordinary office and hydrocarbon (kerosene jet fuel) fires only burn at about 50% of the temperature required to melt steel under atmospheric conditions.
Gunny: “the difference between a small cupola filled with charcoal, and skyscraper filled with jet fuel is only a matter of scale.” The two are not even remotely similar. Coke burns at a much higher temperature than kerosene (jet fuel), up to 2000 deg C under forced air conditions, which is how a cupola operates.

/Users/Joe/Desktop/Aqua-AMSU-30N-60N-ch-5-7-temps.png
The article that accompanies this: ( graphic in open area)
One of the most refreshing aspects about being on the side of the global warming argument I am is that most of us are true free thinking liberals in the real sense of the word. We dont march along as sheep. Instead the pursuit of the correct answer, what ever that may be, is our goal.
A simple agenda.. get the answer right.
I just read another stunningly ignorant article claiming global warming was( is) responsible for all that is wrong in the weather, climate or whatever. I am simply astounded that someone that is accorded the honor of a PHD can think this way. Seriously. In face of major direct contrary evidence, we get people taking the opposite tact of what is actually happening.
In any case, suspicions have arisen as to the prowess of the Discover site 400mb temp. Since I am friends with Dr. Roy Spencer, we have been communicating back and forth. Roy, because he is a great scientist, raised questions as to whether the temperatures were actually that cold at 400 mb. So here we have a major proponent of the open minded debate side, which is what we are, questioning the data that would seemingly back up the argument that its not warming, but if anything, cooling, that is the problem. After bantering back and forth and acknowledging this could be in error since its so stunning a drop, Roy looked deeper into the problem. He looked at levels AROUND 400 mb to see if there is any of this going on,. And after doing so, he sent me this graphic which supports the contention that there has been major and dramatic cooling and that its real.
GRAPHIC HERE, IF I GET AWAY WITH THIS, SHOWING THE DRAMATIC COOLING THAT HAS OCCURRED!
For the nehsayers out there 3 Major point stick out to send you home with a more open mind
1) over the past 10 years, in spite of the warm pdo till 07 and the still warm amo, there has been no increase in the earths temps in the mid and upper troposphere
2) The most rapid responses occur after warming or cooling enso events of moderate or greater nature.. showing the direct tie in to the tropical pacific. You would have to be blind, ignorant, deceptive, or all three, if you did not see that.
3) the temps AROUND the 400 mb level have dropped in a major way. Since the global temp has fallen on the order of .4c since last spring, it follows that the severe weather can not have been caused by warming. I will leave the door open for it NOT being caused by cooling.. because I am a nice guy, though this looks like a 3 strikes and you are out situation.. BUT ITS MOST CERTAINLY NOT WARMING
Here is 3a) the last monster spring month for tornadoes was May 2008 another cool enso ( la nina) response
I would suggest the sheep that follow their shepherd of AGW find another pasture to graze in as far as this matter goes
ciao for now

Will email graphic to Anthony, maybe he can figure out how to get it on site.

Dear Bublhead,
I’m sorry for your unfortunate selection of screen name, it makes responding to you without sounding condescending more difficult than it would be otherwise.
You really have to watch out for that straw-man fallacy. If you listened carefully to Mr Bastardi you would recognize that he was not trying to refute ‘global warming’ [meaning Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming based on human CO2 emissions] on this occasion, he was trying to refute the fallacious connection between the recent devastating tornado outbreaks and CAGW theory, two rather different propositions.
Mr. Bastardi does successfully refute the proposition that warm temperatures and excess moisture in the atmosphere leads to mass outbreaks of destructive tornadoes. It is unfortunate that Fox News could not provide any of weatherbell.com’s usual graphics to support his contention, but Bastardi is factually correct, what turns an ordinary tornado year into a year like this one is an excess of vertical wind-shear do to the intrusion of cold air from Canada.
If you choose to inform yourself, this blog is chock full of information, the relevant graphs and informed discussion that should convince anyone who is willing to be convinced on the evidence that powerful tornadic activity is associated with cool or cooling trends, and that the switch between such warming and cooling trends is strongly associated with such climatological cycles such as the ENSO, the PDO, AMO, and of course the much discussed Arctic Oscillation.
There MAY BE an anthropogenic signal in there somewhere, possibly due to land use changes, deforestation, atmospheric pollution do to black carbon, even emissions of CO2, but that proposition is still being debated vigorously, here and many other reputable places.
But, if you have convinced yourself that the ONLY explanation for the 1-1.5˚C [or whatever its REAL value is] trend in Global Average Surface Temperature in the last hundred fifty years can only be due to mankind’s emissions of CO2, then I don’t know what to say except that you need to broaden the scope of your investigation.
Best regards,
W^3

to amplify Gunnys’ statement.
steel is mostly iron. iron will burn. the most frequently seen example is an aceytelene torch cutting steel plate.
in the process you heat the steel up to yellow temperature and apply oxygen it will burn and in the burning process it liberates a great deal of heat. if your system is large enough and hot enough you can take the fire from the torch away and keep the burning going with only an oxygen stream. this is called an “oxygen lance”. it is an exothermic reaction and liberates great amounts of heat.
in steel manufacture this is called the basic oxygen process. an example would be 120 tons of molten steel is poured into a cruicible. 120tons of steel scrap is then poured on top of that. a STRONG stream of oxygen is applied. there is no other source of heat than the reaction and in about 30 minutes the whole charge is molten.
i watched this in action in a steel mill that made 500tons of steel per hour in southern california. it was shut down by scaqmd for air pollution reasons about 30 years ago.
if there is any evidence of steel/iron melting in the towers (it would be at the edges of the beams) especially in the upper levels of the fire some burning of steel probably has occoured.
C

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/03/bastardi-on-the-non-existent-climate-tornado-linkage/#comment-673208
fear: The isobaric adiabatic flame temperature of jet fuel is about 3800 F. Hot enough for you? The typical exhaust temperature of an afterburning military engine is around 3200 F. Will that melt structural steel? Yes. I’m not sure where you are getting your numbers but it’s probably an open-air temperature. Fires in confined spaces like engines, or buildings, get considerably hotter.
But what does this have to do with global warming?

If google is going to drive people way from sharing or embedding youtube videos then they should probably remove the “Share or Embed” button from the videos.

Mark W:
One of the most famous examples of the poor performance of steel buildings in fire:
http://www.autotran.us/TheGreatHydraMaticFire.html
Note that it burned to the ground.

The heat to soften or melt the steel girders could come from burning aluminium, magnesium and the various light metal alloys used in the aircraft. The fresh metal surfaces from fractured metal will catch on fire quite easily in a hot flame. Electrical arcs from severed electrical service lines could also initiate combustion of these metals.
The black smoke in the fires was probably from the rubber tires and plastic materials such as polystyrene.

MarkW says:
June 3, 2011 at 2:07 pm
If you try to teach me something in the chemistry of combustion you fail miserably.
Burning gasoline in an open pit is far from a complete combustion and the smoke you see is a perfect sign of it. A near complete combustion is what your IC engine achieves. Do you see black smoke coming out of your exhaust pipe? A perfect combustion give only colorless water and carbon dioxide and the maximum heat.
The bridge in question was made manly of concrete. Concrete is not a conductor of heat and and becomes very brittle when heated to high temperatures. This is why it was damaged. The iron bars (which are not structural steel) are not made to support the bulk of the weight, they are there to give the concrete a little more flexibility.

@Bublhead says:
June 3, 2011 at 11:13 am
“…Nothing that he said indicates the atmospheric CO2 levels are not historically high and still rising….”
Good name. Now Joe might not refer in a 2-minute segment to “historically high CO2 levels” but here’s a few references for you to chew on:
http://earth.geology.yale.edu/~ajs/2001/Feb/qn020100182.pdf
http://www.biocab.org/Carbon_Dioxide_Geological_Timescale.html
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/CO2_Temp_O2.html
These show, within the time frame of the last 600 million years (where we have much rock in which to find a record), CO2 is essentially at historically low levels. We’re not too far from killing off lots of plants. We are in fact in a global ice age that will probably last tens of millions of years.
Now, you may dispute these analyses (I suspect you’ll just ignore them) but then you have to overturn the science used in making these estimates. Good luck with that. There a several independent studies that give similar results.
This whole “AGW” thing makes me angrier by the day. There are many contributors to whether the Earth is a place hospitable to life, or a cold, sere ball of ice. CO2 is about as important as the second-team punter in the game of life.

Curiousgeorge says:
June 3, 2011 at 10:45 am

According to Mark Masnick, if a website embeds a YouTube video that is determined to have infringed on copyright and more than 10 people view it on that website, the owner or others associated with the website could face up to five years in prison.

The fact that I would be perfectly able to embed a video of my own making that then pops up a random (well, google-chosen) video that may be played in the embedded frame makes a complete mockery of that.

The funny thing is that I’ve shown countless people the NOAA data on F3-F5s and on F5/EF5s, and they just dismiss it because it’s “obvious” that stronger tornadoes are linked to global warming.
Talk about “deniers.”

Near the end of Joe’s video there is what looks like a tornado spout going sideways. Was it really, or was that just an optical effect? Being from the UK, we don’t get many (thank $deity) and hadn’t seen video of one doing that before. What causes that? Guessing may be windshear?

@TravisB:
There is no reason for empathy. B.S. is B.S. and the truthers are just as full of in as the alarmists.

I cannot believe that this discussion has taken place. Anyone who has seen a blacksmith work, seen video of a blacksmith working, or even heard of a blacksmith should know that fire melts steel all the time.
The WTC was going to have asbestos foam fire proofing, but it was found that asbestos causes cancer. There was no readily available substitute at the time that was as light and as fire proof. What was used was not adequate.

I believe what Rosie was trying to say was that never before in history (until 9/11) had we witnessed steel frame buildings collapsing due to fire. I don’t know whether or not that is factually correct; however, she did make an interesting point that building 7s collapse was the result of small fires started by falling debris, not jet fuel. It is pretty amazing to think that a building fire could cause an implosion like the one that news crews filmed of WTC 7.

MarkW says:
June 3, 2011 at 12:07 pm
Bublhead says:
“Nothing that he said indicates that the Global Average Surface Temperature is not increasing. Nothing that he said indicates the atmospheric CO2 levels are not historically high and still rising.”
–
When CO2 exceeds 5000ppm (not the trivial 390 we are enjoying today) it will finally reach “historic” levels. Until then, learn some science.

MarkW you are right about Bublhead but some sources indicate that the Bublhead was off by even more than you have indicated. This link http://www.ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/2005-08-18/dioxide.htm shows a CO2 concentration of about 7000ppm during the Cambrian.
Or just the graph may be seen here http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image277.gif

@Michael Jankowski
A history channel program on the collapse of the twin towers several years ago revealed that only the lower 1/4 of the support beams in the twin towers were insulated against fire because when the building reached that point a ban against asbestos was in put in place at that time. So no insulation, lots of fuel and a building that acts like a big chimney, of course it’s going to collapse. BTW the asbestos that was used was in a location where after it was applied no one would ever come into contact with it.

I don’t think you can get a better explanation than this as to why the towers collapsed.The steel did not need to melt,just buckle.
For Elizabeth

Maybe we need to start another web page just to discuss the WTC collapse.
Steel fails in fires all the time. Truss type roofing is especially vulnerable because it is so light in weight. Lots of cases of this happening as even a small, localized fire can collapse a roof. That’s why sprinklers spray up, to protect the structure.
Charts showing the allowable loads on columns and beams have a temperature limitation noted, above which they no longer maintain their rated strength. It’s not all that high. At 550 deg. C, steel loses about half it’s tensile strength.
In the case of the WTC, the fireproofing was removed by the impact of the aircraft, which were moving at about 400 knots. For an exercise, calculate the kinetic energy of 90 tons moving at 400 knots stopping in a few feet. Without fireproofing, all that is needed for structural failure is for one beam or column to fail in the right place. Remember that several columns and the outer structural walls were compromised by the impact, placing abnormal stress on the remaining components. They didn’t need to get very hot to fail.
Some people claim that hot, molten material running out of the building is evidence of some especially hot incendiary device. Ever see a car that was allowed to burn? Rivers of molten aluminum if it had an aluminum engine block, transmission case, or other major component. Now, where could aluminum come from? What did those airplanes weigh? Melting point of Al, 660 deg. C.
Now, let’s get back to global warming and tornadoes.

E.M.Smith says:
June 3, 2011 at 11:26 pm
@SteveSadlov:
Nice article. I took a stab at translating it to English . . .

As the guy said: “Only human beings create knowledge and science, and those who bet on the computers made a wrong diagnosis. It will be Nature that will show which theory is correct, “and yet” the professor concluded, “the Earth cools.”

hear, hear mr. smith,
i believe you have it.
C

Just hold on tight, solar activity remains low despite sunspot groups, volcanic activity remains high and shows no sign of slowing to speak of. Sharp temperature gradients, probably like it was going into the LIA.

My takes a litttle different. My hobby is silver smithing. But I have made a number of my own tools. Give me a torch and a piece of tool steel. I can twist or bend it pretty fast. Doesn’t take long at all. An that’s all you need.
But I’m not an expert like Rosie.

Bulbhead (way down on the list):
Joe Bastardi didn’t attempt to refute whether or not humans are causing warming (I believe without a doubt we are, to at least some extent). As anyone checking the current status of the world’s climate knows, the recent and intense La Nina has caused a general cooling of the planet. Thus, if this current global cooling is relatively concentrated outside of the tropics (any comment on this here?), then the temperature difference between arctic and tropic would be increased thus increasing the probability of tornadoes in the US Midwest. Bastardi’s hypothesis is therefore reasonable while yours appears not.

Noelene, the youtube link of your video clip contains the following corrections from the publisher of the video: “the claim in this video that the fires were “likely fed by a series of diesel generators” turned out not to be the case, and the hypothesis that the collapse started with Truss 1 was also incorrect. The collapse actually started in the same vicinity only a few floors up, with the collapse of Column 79.”
There are other inaccuracies, such as contrary to the video clip firefighters did report hearing explosions before the building collapsed. For a “debunking of the debunkers” see:

@ ferd berple:
June 4, 2011 at 8:04 am
If you read the article you cited . . . . Bryan McCarthy going to stream the Super Bowl . . . that like stealing cable signals . . . . it is illegal . . . . just like stealing electricity or phone service . . .
Anyone can link to the utube on the site itself . . . .
Giving credit where credit is due . . . is right . . . .
So I don’t know what alarmist fire you are trying to start . . .

ferd berple
June 4, 2011 at 8:49 am
Here Ferd . . . . there are pleny of sites . . .
9/11 Truth and the Collapse of Steel Framed Buildings
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=WTC+collapse&tbm=blg

@Bublhead
I don’t think he was trying to refute anything you said. He amply refuted the assertion that AGW was not behind the tornado outbreak. You didn’t list the one and only thing he intended to refute in your list of things he failed to refute.
BTW, most of the readers on hear know that there is a slight warming from increase of CO2. It is the feedback that is in dispute. You didn’t list that item, either.

@Laurie Bowen
I don’t think Ferd is interested in what mechanical and civil engineering experts have to say on the issue of the WTC collapse. He’s more focused in why money was transferred on this particular day (as if money isn’t being transferred all the time). His theory is a lot like saying some particular person’s sneeze caused the Japan earthquake. Certainly he could find someone who would remember someone sneezing right before the quake.

“The melting point of steel is 1510 deg. C. A hydrocarbon fire (jet fuel), under optimum atmospheric conditions, burns at about 815 deg”
Must be magic then. 30 feet back from an F-14 at maximum power the exhaust is at about 982°C. I guess that is not optimum since the temperature is too high.
http://www.anft.net/f-14/f14-detail-engine-05.htm

Shanghai Dan & Jose Suro:
Nowhere do I claim that office fires do not weaken steel. Of course fire can weaken steel. My comment was with respect to MELTING of steel. Engineering principles would not permit the use a material that completely deteriorates under anticipated extreme conditions.
A fundamental engineering principle of disaster response in structural design is “deformation, but not collapse.” When designing a building for earthquakes, the Design Philosophy is to permit sufficient ductility so that the building deforms during the event, but it does not collapse. The building may not be salvageable afterward, but you have mitigated loss of life because the building has not collapsed and people have had a chance to escape. Note that there were very few (if any) building collapses at Fukushima as a result of the earthquake. (Of course the tsunami was an entirely different story)
The same Philos0phy applies to Fire Protection Design. You permit deformation of the building, but you design to avoid complete catastrophic collapse. This principle applies to the primary level of protection, i.e., the structural members, exclusive of the fireproofing applied later to the members. Buildings are designed with very conservative factors of safety and multiple levels of redundancy so that even if localized fire temperatures were high enough to induce significant loss of strength you incur only deformation, rather than catastrophic collapse. However, if typical occupancy fires were hot enough to reduce structural strength to zero, that is, to the melting point, you can be assured that it would never be used as a building material in high rise buildings.
Having said all that, my main point is that there is abundant and extensive eye-witness testimony of molten metal found in the rubble pile weeks and months after 9/11. The reports are coming from the cleanup workers and experts like Leslie Robertson, WTC structural designer. These people will know the difference between molten aluminum and molten iron. NIST claims that gaseous temperatures did not rise much above 1000 deg C, and that those events occurred for no more than 15 to 20 minutes in any given location. Note this is the gaseous temperatures, not steel temperatures. Steel temperatures would have been much lower. This cannot explain the molten iron found in the rubble piles.

Still waiting for JB’s prediction about a recovery of the arctic sea ice from the long term downtrend to show up in the real world. Joe seems to think humans have no effect at all on climate and we can just look back in the record books and wait for some long term cycle to repeat itself. Problem is Joe, that there is no 30 or 60 or 100 year cycle that includes the current levels of CO2. We’d have to back at least 800,000 years or more. Now, the 2011 tornado outbreak and other wacky weather around the world certainly has happened before (at least the tornadoes did during the last cool PDO/La Nina), and it is premature to link them to AGW, but currently arctic sea ice remains at or near modern record lows, and you’d think if JB is right, we should have started to see a recovery. With all this cooling that supposed to happening, why is the the arctic not cooling and the sea ice not recovering? Why? Because the arctic is responding to long term warming of both ocean and air temps in the region, and is less influenced by the short term ENSO cycle which an cause the rapid up and down extremes in troposphere temps that Joe alluded to– though conveniently failing to mention that the arctic continues to behave as GCM’s have projected when factoring in the 40% increase in CO2 since the 1700’s.

R. Gates says:
June 4, 2011 at 5:55 pm
“though conveniently failing to mention that the arctic continues to behave as GCM’s have projected when factoring in the 40% increase in CO2 since the 1700′s.”
==========
Whatever, now we come to the crux of the problem.
Who will pay for these flights of fancy?

I have worked doing structural steel for many years, many of you people don’t seem to realize that there is a huge difference between heating a thin light gauge truss, and applying heat to a column or beam, that has flanges, web’s or box section that is two to four inches thick, these heavy gauge steel’s require a huge amount of heat/energy to straighten or bend. If you set up one of these piece’s of steel and lit a fire beneath it, it would take many many hours of constant fire to warm it enough to make it slightly plastic.
Some in here don’t seem to know anything about the construction of those towers, they had a massive core structure, read this about the core column’s, http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/arch/core.html
Then you have to understand that every perimeter and core column was joined by the “Hat Truss”, this is what allows the column’s to share load and also this redistributes load in case of a aircraft impact. http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/arch/hattruss.html
This guy certified the steel.
Kevin Ryan has addressed the issues of fire and steel temperatures in a now famous letter to the NIST. Ryan has played a major role in the so-called “9/11 Truth movement”. He had been a certified expert working for Underwriters Laboratories, which was tasked with the responsibility of analyzing the fire and collapsed buildings at the WTC. He sent this letter of rebuttal when he began to realize there was a government whitewash going on.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) had been working on a report that was allegedly going to explain how mere ‘fires’ brought the Twin Towers crashing down. On November 11, Mr. Ryan sent the following letter to Dr. Frank Gayle of NIST.
The response to Ryan’s correspondence was that he was immediately fired. This gives a partial answer to the question some may have as to how such huge undertakings could be successfully kept from the public:
There are in fact, quite a number of ‘whistle blowers’ who have been unjustly gagged, fired, marginalized, imprisoned and murdered as they have attempted to reveal many of these shenanigans. Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury News is one such fatality, and more will be said about that later on.
Here are some excerpts from Kevin Ryan’s letter:
There continues to be a number of “experts” making public claims about how the WTC buildings fell. One such person, Dr. Hyman Brown from the WTC construction crew, claims that the buildings collapsed due to fires at 2000F melting the steel. He states “What caused the building to collapse is the airplane fuel…burning at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The steel in that five-floor area melts.”
We know that the steel components were certified to ASTME119. The time temperature curves for this standard require the samples to be exposed to temperatures around 2000F for several hours. And as we all agree, the steel applied met those specifications.
Your comments suggest that the steel was probably exposed to temperatures of only about 500F (250C), which is what one might expect from a thermodynamic analysis of the situation.
However the summary of the new NIST report seems to ignore your findings, as it suggests that these low temperatures caused exposed bits of the building’s steel core to “soften and buckle.” Additionally this summary states that the perimeter columns softened, yet your findings make clear that “most perimeter panels (157 of 160) saw no temperature above 250C [500F].”
To soften steel for the purposes of forging, normally temperatures need to be above 1100C [about 2200F]. However, this new summary report suggests that much lower temperatures were able to not only soften the steel in a matter of minutes, but lead to rapid structural collapse.
This story just does not add up. If steel from those buildings did soften or melt, I’m sure we can all agree that this was certainly not due to jet fuel fires of any kind, let alone the briefly burning fires in those towers. That fact should be of great concern to all Americans.
I believe your work could also be a nucleus of fact around which the truth, and thereby global peace and justice, can grow again. Please do what you can to quickly eliminate the confusion regarding the ability of jet fuel fires to soften or melt structural steel.
(Letter from Kevin Ryan.)
GRUDGING CONFIRMATON FROM NIST
In September of 2007, there was an interesting development on this issue of steel temperatures at the WTC. A rather amazing and grudgingly concessionary letter from the NIST, written to the head of the largest “9/11 family members group”, Bill Doyle (who has also strongly concluded 9/11 was an “inside job”)…in which the NIST is doing some very strange backpeddling.
Under pressure from the family members of 9/11 victims, the NIST has now admitted (as of September 27, 2007) that all the steel samples they have retained from the WTC’s “ground zero” and have subsequently tested…were shown to have heated to no more than 500F. (See Section E)
Just exactly as Kevin Ryan, Jim Hoffman, unwilling witness “Corus Construction” and several hundred other experts have predicted. My oh my. So, how could these buildings have possibly collapsed if the steel never heated beyond 500F??
You can barely bake a cake at 500F, let alone cause a 110-story steel structure to freefall into a pile of smoldering rubble.

ferd berple says:
June 4, 2011 at 7:56 pm
“GCM’s have projected when factoring in the 40% increase in CO2 since the 1700″
Temperature has been increasing rought .5C per century since the little ice age. No one knows what caused the little ice age so it is impossible to say why temperatures would increase afterwards. We do know that increasing temperature releases CO2 from the oceans, which is consistent with the observed increase in CO2 in the atmosphere.
——
The increase of CO2 in the atmosphere since the end of the Little Ice Age has been primarily due to human activities. It has reach levels not seen in at least 800,000 years. These are the known facts. What we don’t know is exactly how the climate will respond to these levels as the natural response through the carbon and rock weathering cycle is to accelerate the hydrological cycle which increases rock weathering and this will slowly bring CO2 levels back down. This process is far too slow when compares to how fast human activity has raised these levels.

R. Gates says:
June 4, 2011 at 9:23 pm
This process [weathering] is far too slow when compares to how fast human activity has raised these levels.
Gates, despite your “begging the question” fallacy above and crude boiler plate attempt to induce fear, your retreat to pure fear-mongering itself only shows that you don’t have anything real to base your fear upon – quite simply because nothing has occurred in the modern era which exceeds the bounds of our natural climate, although black carbon and land use might be producing some localized anomalies.
The “method” which ipcc CO2=CAGW Climate Science uses involving demonizing CO2 and disasterizing GW is simply not part of the scientific method.
Moreover, “the alleged cure is worse than the alleged disease”: bringing about an obvious disaster by de-developing in order to allegedly prevent a completely unhinged alleged future CAGW disaster, again ideas derived solely via the induction of panic, is just plain stupid.
Perhaps you have never heard of China and India?

>Here are the WTC Blueprints

Sure there is a core structure, but the load bearing and how that building functions is NOT a typical steel grid of beams bolted together. A laughable kettle you are to stand here and state I am spreading disinformation.

JPeden says:
June 4, 2011 at 11:37 pm
R. Gates says:
June 4, 2011 at 9:23 pm
“This process [weathering] is far too slow when compares to how fast human activity has raised these levels.”
Gates, despite your “begging the question” fallacy above and crude boiler plate attempt to induce fear…
________
Fear? I’m not afraid, why would I want to make others that way? I simply state facts. If these facts cause some to be afraid…that’s from them…not me.
JPeden goes on to say:
Moreover, “the alleged cure is worse than the alleged disease”: bringing about an obvious disaster by de-developing in order to allegedly prevent a completely unhinged alleged future CAGW disaster, again ideas derived solely via the induction of panic, is just plain stupid.
Perhaps you have never heard of China and India/
______
I’ve never mentioned “de-developing” anywhere in my posting. Not sure where you get this from. As far a China and India go…together they make up nearly a third of the world’s population. They’d darn well develop as they’ve got a lot of hungry mouths to feed.

{snicker}
While looking something else up, I ran across the adiabatic flame temperature for kerosene. 2093°C.
Granted… it’s still not “optimum”
ROFLOL.

thereisnofear, how to you know that the smoke from the fires was black? According to the “live” news broadcasts from that day, the smoke could be gray or white or some other color too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iUXJXAPUUg
And as a structural engineer you should be aware of that a high rise steel building can never collapse from top down by gravity into rubble due to local damages up top and create a Ground Zero. Anders Björkman has a $ 1 500 000 price for anyone that can prove this: http://heiwaco.tripod.com/chall.htm

@ elbuggo June 6, 2011 at 1:01 am
Thanks for calling attention to my famous Heiwa Challenge. Evidently no structure A (eg WTC 1 and 2 at NY) of any kind can be crushed down into dust by a top C of itself A (as happened ‘live on TV’ on 911 2001).
So it seems USA blow up its own towers on 911 and then Obama killed a person Osama not responsible for it last month.
You wonder what will happen next!

Ralph,
You keep on raising the specter of the Cardigan Tests, as though they somehow explain how pools of molten metal can be generated from the WTC fires. You claim that temperatures reached 1213 C (which is still well below the melting point of steel). But you fail to note that these are gas temperatures, not steel temperatures. In all of the Cardigan Tests, steel temperatures remained below 1000 C, which is less than 2/3 the temperature needed to even initiate melting, let alone to create “rivers of molten steel” that persist months after the event.
And significantly, though this is beside the point, the structure in the Cardigan Tests DID NOT COLLAPSE, even though the steel was unprotected.
NIST, the official assessors of the WTC collapse, claim that atmospheric gas temperatures only reached about 1000 C in the fires. Their response to the overwhelming evidence of molten metal was first of all to ignore it, and when they could do that no longer, to deny it.
As for the fanciful notions put forward by some others about conditions in a foundry (Shanghai Dan), temperatures out the back of an F-14 (SSam), or mysterious chemical reactions in the rubble (pk), I must say, with all due respect, that these are irrelevant.
The conditions in a foundry or out the back of an F-14 are in no way analogous to an office fire in a high-rise structure. First of all, even NIST admits that most of the jet fuel was consumed in the initial inferno that accompanied the original collision, and that the remainder of the jet fuel was lapped up within a few minutes. Therefore, the jet fuel could not contribute significantly to any melting steel. But even so, the temperature created by an F-14 is irrelevant since that represents a carefully controlled combustion with optimal air-fuel mixtures.
Secondly, in a foundry air is forced into the burning coke fuel to induce higher temperatures. This is not at all similar to office fires in oxygen-deprived conditions.
I don’t understand the statement about iron drops experiencing higher temperatures when they splash into the coke pile. Isn’t this intuitively obvious? The fire is hotter than the metal in the crucible, so the iron should get hotter – radiative heat transfer and all that.
Finally, pk suggests that the mysterious chemical reactions in the rubble may have created the necessary heat conditions. But this is nothing but fanciful speculation. What kind of chemicals may have been present in WTC1, WTC2, and WTC7 (where molten metal was also found) in sufficient quantities to create the conditions necessary to generate pools of molten metal? These were office buildings, not chemical manufacturing facilities. If you have something meaningful to propose, please notify NIST, because that would help alleviate their embarrassment over being unable to explain the molten metal.

Do not be silly, the floor collapsed without ANYTHING falling on top. If a floor can collapse without anything falling on it then of course floors below (and even above) are also ready and free to collapse with little effort.
Once that floor goes there is little holding the outside walls from moving. This means additional floors (both above and below) are now at risk. It is NOT only the weight falling on the floor below, but the loss of the connection and integrity of the outside structure. Once the floor is gone you have several floors now at risk. The outside walls are now movable and thus cannot support floors above or below. It is the walls falling that the floors are attached to that is the issue. With the walls being movable then the floors are now going to move with that outside part. In fact the walls not being attached to anything means that you do not even have to break the connection between the floor and the wall. The floor simply has no support. The wall is free to move and thus this means the floors attached to that wall are also free to move.
The key concept here is the connection between the outside shell and the central support and that wall moving. Just losing one floor will not cause this because the outside parts are still attached above and below. However that above + below connection was broken when the plane cut into the building. This is not a simple weight of a floor falling below as to how this works.
The idea that the building was full of explosive charges on each floor is silly. Worse if there is not explosives on each floor then explain how the pilots knew what floor to hit where the collapses started? And I supposed these pilots had perfect skill to hit correct floor? So now the pilots were able to hit the exact floor two times in a row exactly where the collapses started?