Homestead mailing list

["Melody O." <melody AT crecon.com>]

On the subject of conspiracy theories, here is a great debunker!  It is
long, so I snipped some of what I've read so far...I have much to go, but
it is awesome!

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/4/28/104931/652
Debunking conspiracy theorists' paranoid fantasies about Sept. 11

By balsamic vinigga 
Fri Apr 29th, 2005 at 10:54:34 PM EST 
   
 by Gerard Holmgren debunker AT hotmail.com

Copyright Gerard Holmgren. Jan 2003.

This work may be freely copied and distributed without permission as long
as it not for commercial use. Please include the author's name, the web
address where you found it and the copyright notice.

Astute observers of history are aware that for every notable event there
will usually be at least one ,often several wild conspiracy theories which
spring up around it. "The CIA killed Hendrix" " The Pope had John Lennon
murdered ", "Hitler was half Werewolf", "Space aliens replaced Nixon with a
clone" etc,etc. The bigger the event, the more ridiculous and more numerous
are the fanciful rantings which circulate in relation to it.

So its hardly surprising that the events of Sept 11 2001 have spawned their
fair share of these ludicrous fairy tales. And as always, there is - sadly
- a small but gullible percentage of the population eager to lap up these
tall tales, regardless of facts or rational analysis.

One of the wilder stories circulating about Sept 11, and one that has
attracted something of a cult following amongst conspiracy buffs is that it
was carried out by 19 fanatical Arab hijackers, masterminded by an evil
genius named Osama bin Laden, with no apparent motivation other than that
they "hate our freedoms." 
 
<snip>

There weren't any explosives. It wasn't an inside job. The plane blew up
into nothing from its exploding fuel load! Remarkable! Sluggishly
combustible jet fuel which is basically kerosine,and which burns at a
maximum temperature of around 800 C has suddenly taken on the qualities of
a ferociously explosive demolition agent, vapourizing 65 tons of aircraft
into a puff of smoke. Never mind that a plane of that size contains around
15 tons of steel and titanium, of which even the melting points are about
double that of the maximum combustion temperature of kerosine - let alone
the boiling point - which is what would be required to vapourize a plane.
And then there's about 50 tons of aluminium to be accounted for. In excess
of 15lbs of metal for each gallon of kerosine.

For the conspiracy theorist, such inconvenient facts are vaguely dismissed
as "mumbo jumbo". This convenient little phrase is their answer to just
about anything factual or logical. Like a conjurer pulling a rabbit out of
a hat, they suddenly become fanatically insistent about the devastating
explosive qualities of kerosine, something hitherto completely unknown to
science, but just discovered by them, this very minute. Blissfully ignoring
the fact that never before or since in aviation history has a plane
vapourized into nothing from an exploding fuel load, the conspiracy
theorist relies upon Hollywood images, where the effects are are always
larger than life, and certainly larger than the intellects of these cretins.

"Its a well known fact that planes blow up into nothing on impact." they
state with pompous certainty. "Watch any Bruce Willis movie."

"Care to provide any documented examples? If it's a well known fact, then
presumably this well known fact springs from some kind of documentation -
other than Bruce Willis movies ?"

At this point the mad but cunning eyes of the conspiracy theorist will
narrow as they sense the corner that they have backed themselves into, and
plan their escape by means of another stunning backflip.

"Ah, but planes have never crashed into buildings before, so there's no way
of telling." they counter with a sly grin.

Well, actually planes have crashed into buildings before and since, and not
vapourized into nothing.

"But not big planes, with that much fuel ", they shriek in hysterical denial.

Or that much metal to vapourize.

"Yes but not hijacked planes!"

"Are you suggesting that whether the crash is deliberate or accidental
affects the combustion qualities of the fuel?"

"Now you're just being silly".

Although collisions with buildings are rare, planes frequently crash into
mountains, streets, other aircraft, nosedive into the ground,or have bombs
planted aboard them, and don't vapourize into nothing. What's so special
about a tower that's mostly glass? But by now, the conspiracy theorist has
once again sailed happily around the fruit loop. "Its a well documented
fact that planes explode into nothing on impact."

Effortlessly weaving back and forth between the position that its a "well
known fact" and that "its never happened before, so we have nothing to
compare it to", the conspiracy theorist has now convinced themselves ( if
not too many other people) that the WTC plane was not loaded with
explosives, and that the instant vapourization of the plane in a massive
fireball was the same as any other plane crash you might care to mention.
Round and round the fruit. loop...

But the hurdles which confront the conspiracy theorist are many, and they
are now forced to implement even more creative uses for the newly
discovered shockingly destructive qualities of kerosine. They have to
explain how the Arabs also engineered the elegant veritcal collapse of both
the WTC towers, and for this awkward fact the easiest counter is to simply
deny that it was a controlled demolition, and claim that the buildings
collapsed from fire caused by the burning kerosine.

For this, its necessary to sweep aside the second law of thermodynamics and
propose kerosine which is not only impossibly destructive, but also
recycles itself for a second burning in violation of the law of degradation
of energy. You see, it not only consumed itself in a sudden catastrophic
fireball , vapourizing a 65 ton plane into nothing, but then came back for
a second go, burning at 2000C for another hour at the impact point, melting
the skyscraper's steel like butter. And while it was doing all this it also
poured down the elevator shafts, starting fires all through the building.
When I was at school there was a little thing called the entropy law which
suggests that a given portion of fuel can only burn once, something which
is readily observable in the real world, even for those who didn't make it
to junior high school science. But this is no problem for the conspiracy
theorist. Gleefully, they claim that a few thousand gallons of kerosine is
enough to

:completely vapourize a 65 ton aircraft

:have enough left over to burn ferociously enough for over an hour at the
impact point to melt steel ( melting point about double the maximum
combustion temperature of the fuel )

:still have enough left over to pour down the elevator shafts and start
similarly destructive fires all through the building.

This kerosine really is remarkable stuff! How chilling to realize that
those kerosine heaters we had in the house when I was a kid were deadly
bombs, just waiting to go off. One false move and the entire street might
have been vapourized. And never again will I take kerosine lamps out
camping. One moment you're there innocently holding the lamp - the next -
kapow! Vapourized into nothing along with with the rest of the camp site,
and still leaving enough of the deadly stuff to start a massive forest fire.

These whackos are actually claiming that the raging inferno allegedly
created by the miraculously recycling, and impossibly hot burning kerosine
melted or at least softened the steel supports of the skyscraper. Oblivious
to the fact that the smoke coming from the WTC was black, which indicates
an oxygen starved fire -therefore, not particularly hot, they trumpet an
alleged temperature in the building of 2000 C , without a shred of evidence
to support this curious suspension of the laws of physics.

Not content with this ludicrous garbage, they then contend that as the
steel frames softened, they came straight down instead of buckling and
twisting and falling sideways.

Since they're already re-engineered the combustion qualities of jet fuel,
violated the second law of thermodynamics, and re-defined the structural
properties of steel, why let a little thing like the laws of gravity get in
the way?

<snip>

And living up to the author's request:
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective
companies. The Rest © 2000 - 2005 Kuro5hin.org Inc.
See our legalese page for copyright policies. Please also read our Privacy
Policy.
Kuro5hin.org is powered by Free Software, including Apache, Perl, and
Linux, The Scoop Engine that runs this site is freely available, under the
terms of the GPL.
Need some help? Email help AT kuro5hin.org.
If you can read this, you are sitting too close to your screen.