Young Australian Skeptics

The first part of this series can be found here.

Next on the chopping block is Martypants. Martypants had the good courtesy to break his claims up into easy to rebut chunks, so I can cut right to the meat of what he says. It’s rather much nicer than having to deal with Tony’s obfuscating self-​​importance. Let’s see how he fares:

“Point One:

“The rate of acceleration would have begun decreasing”

[… ]

“The upper mass accelerated through the lower section, therefore it must be more massive” is a logical fallacy.“

Eh, not really. It’s factually incorrect, but that doesn’t make it an error of reasoning. Either way, it’s probably a good thing that I’ve never actually said that. Stop wailing on the strawman — what did it do to harm you?

“The debate we are having is centred on why and how the upper section accelerated through the lower section in a linear way.“

Seems highly unlikely we’d debate that, seeing as how it is also not true. The acceleration was approximately constant, which makes sense considering that near the surface of the earth acceleration due to gravity is constant. Swing and a miss, strike one.

“Point two:

Structural integrity of the lower section

[…]
I digress. The direct rebuttal to Richards claim that the lower section of the building was not structurally sound has to be made. It was without a doubt structurally sound, up to the instant of the collapse. Providing all the strength of resistance in support of the upper section that it had in the years preceding 911.“

Before September 11, the lower section had indeed provided structural support for the static load above it. Oddly enough though, the lower section wasn’t build to withstand a dynamic load of the same weight. I can balance a ten kilogram weight on my head without doing myself any damage; I can’t have someone drop a ten kilogram weight onto my head and expect the same result. He misses the fastball — strike two!

“Point Three:

Richard’s floating floors!”

Oh, good grief.

“Richard blesses the upper section as having a momentum inclusive of its entire mass. This mass constitutes all of the 12 floors in the upper section acting as one unit. This of course is again correct. They are connected together via steel and concrete, none of which was damaged by the impact of the plane below.

What you MUST also do, in order to be fair and correct is to afford the lower section the same collective mass. Its floors too, are all connected by steel and concrete and as mentioned in point two above, are undamaged by the impact of the plane.”

No. This isn’t summer camp for snowflakes, where everyone gets to be a winner — ‘fair’ doesn’t enter into it. The actual dynamics of the collapse are more complicated than my simplification — that’s true, and I’ve never said otherwise. Indeed, I even explicitly stated my assumptions — and quite frankly, they’re not unreasonable assumptions to make for a simplified model. The fact of the matter is that the assumption that the entire lower block would act as one uniform mass is so insanely stupid I’m genuinely surprised you actually know how to use a computer. There’s really very little that can be said about this…it’s as if someone suggested to you that cement might be an ingredient in foie gras — it’s so wrong, it’s not even wrong.

Strike three! In a normal game of baseball that’d be out, but I’m willing to give you one more chance to redeem yourself…

“Point Four:

The law of conservation of momentum negates the effect of gravity!!”

…I immediately regret that decision.

”… doesn’t gravity act in favour of the upper section?“

Yes, unless they invented ‘upward gravity’ while I wasn’t looking.

“NO, the law of conservation of energy and momentum states: every action has an equal and opposite reaction!“

Um…no. No it doesn’t. Conservation of energy states that energy will be conserved in a closed system. Swap a few words, and it’s the same for conservation of momentum. You’d be thinking of Newton’s third law of motion, if I make the rather generous assumption that you are in fact thinking.

“Richard of course forgets to mention this at all.“

Because it’s irrelevant to the situation at hand.

“This means the gravity force pushing the upper section down into the lower is met by an equal force (generated by gravity) of resistance from the lower floor into the upper section.

This means the addition of gravity has no effect on which of the two structures will give way. It only provides a greater stress contributing to the destruction of the less massive object. In lay terms it just smashes them together a bit harder. The weaker one will still break first.“

Ugh. So many, many epic fails in such a small block of text. Where to begin?

Well, to start, gravity doesn’t ‘push’ anything — it’s an attractive, not a repulsive force. So right off the bat you’ve got the wrong conceptual image in your head. Next, the resistance that the upper section encounters when it hits the lower section is most definitely not generated by gravity — gravity is, for all practical purposes, only pulling in one direction when you’re this close to the Earth, and that direction is down.

The biggest problem with this bit, however, is the massive oversimplification of the system. Yes, Newton’s third law tells us that the forces on interacting objects are always of equal magnitude and opposite direction…but unless you’ve got a reasonably simple system, that’s still not going to tell you a hell of a lot. Using Newton’s laws to analyse a complex system is like using toilet plungers to climb the Rialto: It’s not technically impossible, but you’d have to be crazy to try and you’re probably going to fail. It’s for exactly this reason that we use conservation laws in the first place — they’re more general, and they simplify the system in an effort to make it more managable. Besides which, the concept that Newton’s third law will change the outcome of the analysis is based on the idiotic notion that the upper block is interacting with the entire lower structure at once during the collision — so it’s kind of a non-​​starter.

The rest of Martypants’s comment is just more of the same crap, along with accusations that I’m using logical fallacies and other such bollocks. More on that later though — I think we can pretty safely toss this one on the trashheap as well.

That’s four strikes, now, Martypants. You’re definitely out.

— —  —  — —

Finally, L_​D and Hereward. L_​D, you said,

“First, he doesn’t post a link to the paper, this shows he just want’s people to accept his criticisms without looking at the original paper.“

Actually, I didn’t post a link because I refuse to dignify that squalid propaganda pit with a link from this site. I gave the name of the site, and the full title and date of the paper. It’s called “Google”, and it’s not that hard.

And Hereward: I personally think it’s lovely that the Australian captain of Team Paranoia has decided to grace the YAS with his wit. I mean, when you wrote…

“You are a troll. You know that, I know that, and most of the readers of this page know that.“

…you know that’s just brilliant. Completely unashamed ironic humor — trolling the YAS to accuse me of trolling the site I actually write for. You should apply for a job with Fox News — they love writers like you there.

Tags: 9/11 Conspiracy theories, Richard Hughes

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