UPDATE: Graph added below per request from Joe Bastardi.
But first, let’s listen to expert on all things public, scientific, and climatic, Rosie O’Donnell
From Fox News:
Living in an era when pop culture celebrities can assert “expert” opinions on any subject, why wait for science to catch up with pesky facts?
If Rosie O’Donnell says global warming caused Joplin’s destruction, then it must be true, right? As Hollywood knows best, there’s no need for lab research, instant proclamations are good enough. It worked for claiming fire hadn’t melted steel before 9/11, so why not weather can’t cause deadly tornadoes outbreaks before this? Must be global warming then. Yeah that’s the ticket.
Alright, now having weathered that, here’s Joe Bastardi on Fox News talking the science.
UPDATE: Joe Bastardi writes in and asks this graphic to be included (which apparently never made it into the interview). Click for a very large version.
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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.
thereisnofear: These rivers of molten steel exist in your imagination only. There is a picture of something liquid leaking out of the building, it is your assumption that this liquid is melted structural steel. You have no data beyond your personal belief to back this up.
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?
After the Science lesson Rosie maybe should take a History lesson?
I don’t want to enhance this steel melting debate. However, British Steel did a number of full-scale fire tests of burning office buildings in the 1990s (the Cardington Tests), and the temperatures hit 1,213 oc – quite enough to plasticise steel and make it fail structurally.
This was one of the beams, after the test. If this is not melting and plasticising, I don’t know what is.
http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/guardian2/fire/SCI-3-6.jpg
The situation in the WTC would have been worse than this, as the majority of the fire-proofing was blown off in the explosion. Then, with open holes at the top of a big tubular structure, with lift and stair-wells exposed, you end up with a chimney and an actively force-fed oxygen fire. If you can hit 1,200 oc in a test building where the floors remain largely intact, you could easily hit 1,600 oc in a blast-furnace chimney.
.
Here is a detailed report:
http://fire.fsv.cvut.cz/fracof/en/02_FRACOF_observation_on_fires.pdf
http://guardian.150m.com/fire/small/cardington.htm
Piers Corbyn discusses his forecast, and inter alia the recent tornadoes in the US
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.
Are there tornadoes on Venus?
Oh Rosie.
I am not worthy – no – We Are Not Worthy.
Oh – had We an Intellect such as Yours…
Please respond, oh exalted one…
Michal Jankowski,
I am a professional civil engineer. Believe me when I say that it would fly against every known engineering principle to specify a building material that melts if the fireproofing were ever exposed. That would be insanity.
Fireproofing slows heat transfer into the beams, which delays weakening of the steel, thus allowing people to escape and allowing extinguishing of the fire. But the simple scientific facts are that office fires and jet fuel fires cannot possibly generate temperatures of 1510 deg. C. That is not trolling. I am not promoting conspiracy theories. I am only discussing scientific facts, which is what WUWT is supposed to be all about.
/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
I see the graphic did not get in… gasp..it makes my point as plain as the nose on my face ( try disputing that data point)
Will email graphic to Anthony, maybe he can figure out how to get it on site.
MarkW says:
June 3, 2011 at 2:07 pm
Right you are: the properties of steel changes with temperature, irregardless of whether a fire melts it or not. For a structure engineered to stand at normal temperatures, the properties/cross sectioning/design are calculated at those temperatures, not 2000F. The engineer wins.
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
Rosie=windbag
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
Rosie typifies the American condition Indoctrinated with fear about Global Warming but with enough scepticism to see 9/11 as total BS, in time they will see AGW as part of the same product of fear and dis-information to give all your rights away to the Police State.
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?
mark w:
liquid leaking from the fire zone could have been aluminum. it melts at about 800 degrees.
it would have appeared as a silvery looking liquid probably with some white smoke around it.
if you see a tank truck with gasoline or diesel fuel burning then look in the ditches under the wreck and you will see solidified “puddles”. tankers are about 80% by weight aluminum.
aluminum is alsto used extensively in windoframes, file cabinets, the frames for false ceilings……. there is lots of it around in “fireproof construction”.
by the way aluminum also burns, bright white flame dense clouds of white smoke.
THERE IS A PROCESS (THE THERMITE PROCESS) WHERE BY ALUMINUM POWDER IS SET ON FIRE WITH A MAGNIESUM TORCH (RAILROAD FLARE) AND THE ALUMINUM FIRE MELTS IRON OXIDE POWDER WHICH FUSES WITH OTHER IRON IN THE VICINITY AND WELDS IT TOGETHER IN A 100% WELD.
so tell chubs to shut her piehole.
C
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.
The folks at Oregon’s Mt. Bachelor ski area “get it.”
The average seasonal snowfall there is 387″; this year set a new record of 665″ breaking the previous record set during the 1998-99 season. They report that both record years were during similar La Nina events. Extreme weather caused by cooling La Ninas.
http://www.mtbachelor.com/winter/mountain/snow_report
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.
Rivers of Steel Folks,
I have no opinion on the veracity of the claims of rivers of molten steel discovered in the wreckage of the former World Trade Center [or Rosie O’Donnel for that matter], but I can tell you on the authority of any standard structural engineering text that the yield strength of unprotected structural steel work takes a crippling turn downward at about 600-700˚C in as little as twenty minutes of exposure.
Steel is a wonderful building material for high rise structures and has many wonderful properties, but it MUST be protected from fire and extreme heat. Structural steel work at elevated temperature may undergo rapid plastic deformation and subsequently fail completely even under only its own weight, under load it can fail very quickly. If even one building member fails, its load is instantly transmitted to adjacent members this can cause a chain reaction as successively larger overloads are placed on successively fewer structural members. Add tens of thousands of tons worth of intact building above that and you can create an enormous sledge hammer falling directly down on the floors below with a shock load that will very quickly destroy the undamaged levels below.
Ordinary structural steel in buildings above a modest size is required by code to be fire protected either by a sprinkler system in low rise buildings such as warehouses or by adding layers of fireproofing material such as gypsum board or spray on mineral fiber insulation in high rise ones. If a building structure’s fire proofing material is damaged by say, the debris storm of a 90 ton passenger jet carrying in excess of 60,000 liters of fuel passing through it at say approximately mach .65 it might not take very long for the building to collapse.
How on earth did we get onto this subject anyway?? Is there a Godwin’s Law corollary for WTC conspiracy theory that we need to be aware of now of???
your friend,
W^3
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.