User talk:The Original Wildbear/Archives/2011/03March

Conspiracy theory hiding behind a facade of science

1. this section's title should first address why not many editors will heed your advice they keep their comments to your condescending remarks limited to their own talk pages. I for one have left all the comments ever left on my talk page intact, other editors select which they keep. Your comments on mine suggest a dressing down of me on your part without the reader being presented the entire discussion from the article, which would show the context of muliple editors criticizing both the factual errors and tone of your contributions. Frankly your comments on my talk page are out of line anyway, you have no business implying I do not understand the scientific process, you should keep the discussion in the article's talk page. So now you have some mud on your page too, wasn't this fun?
2. Promoting conspiracy theories about 9/11 controlled demolition = poliical agenda. Nuff said. There is hardly enough evidence to feign some interest in science for doing so. Batvette (talk) 22:53, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Batvette, I moved the discussion to your talk page specifically for the reason that article talk pages are for discussing improvements to the article; they are not there for you to use as a platform to hurl insults at others, or for pushing a position with unsourced assertions. At my prompting, you did provide a Wikipedia reference to aluminum in paint, and I commend you for that. That is a small, but positive step of the kind needed to resolve a larger matter. The rest of your sourced assertions were used to attack others, and that is not commendable. In science, an argument wins by the strength and reproducibility of the data; not by the vigor exercised in attacking your opponent. If you understand the scientific process, you are not showing it. Wildbear (talk) 00:04, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Actually I used my assertions to attack 9/11 CDCT's, not simply "others", and you certainly weren't even a blip on the radar screen when I did. I have tangled with enough of them on various places on the internet to assert that IME science and the scientific process is a foreign language to them. You have not at this point demonstrated similar lack of intellectual ethics,(though I'm extending benefit of doubt on presenting that paper as wholly credible, while it's not been discredited you surely were aware there were legitimate concerns about it) so I would suggest you stop stepping up to volunteer to represent them or be offended by them if you cannot take the criticisms for the fairly ridiculous talking points almost all of them resort to. I do get a bit riled when people attempt the tactic of feigning an inherent non bias in the interest of science while they push agenda. Don't bother to deny or refute it because I am not even going to repeat the point you may have been doing it, but I see that done to death in the arena of Climate Change and just be advised that that is a very fast way to piss people off because it insults their intelligence. Scientists are human and have human faults and do pursue their studies and careers based upon personal beliefs just like anyone else. Nobody gets into a career of studying climate change unless they looked at it early and decided it was happening- they wouldn't pursue a career studying a fallacy would they? Similarly Jones wanted to analyze that dust because he wants very badly to find a reason those buildings fell besides airplanes flown by Muslims. This may not preclude any accuracy in it, but asks a healthy skepticism of his work, and the minute someone implies it shouldn't because it's about "science" well that is ridiculous. That said, I have no further quarrel with you until we have further quarrel. Happy wikiing. 15:54, 3 March 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Batvette (talk • contribs)

I think that this discussion has been beneficial, and your tone has moderated a bit from where it was at the beginning. For the record, I'm an equal opportunity critic for any allegedly "scientific" assertions which are not derived from proper scientific method. I spend some time in forums where the people that you would call "9/11 conspiracy theorists" hang out; and I'm just as critical (or more so) of what I see there than what I see here. For example: Jesse Ventura has been pretty much disowned by the 9/11 Truth movement; and I have participated in that. I say, good riddance. David Ray Griffin is on shaky footing for some of his positions (e.g. speculation on voice morphing in cell phone calls, and Pentagon flyover), and I have been participating in that criticism as well. The whole movement is undergoing some intensive self-criticism right now; cleaning out dubious stuff while retaining and focusing on solid evidence. I think this is a good thing. Steven Jones has said some things which I found disturbing to be coming from a scientist; but on the whole, he seems sincere, honest, and knowledgeable. The nanothermite paper was researched and written not by Jones alone, but with the involvement of 8 other scientifically inclined individuals; all of whom are putting their professional reputations on the line by having their names on the paper. I see the paper as neither valid nor invalid; but rather as a legitimate scientific hypothesis which warrants further investigation by other qualified individuals. I don't buy the argument that nanothermite can be constructed from materials purchased at a hardware store, or that it will self-assemble from collapsing buildings. If it were that easy, I could start a business manufacturing nanothermite, and have a monopoly on the private market, since no one else is doing it. I would have a substance with a much lower ignition temperature than regular thermite, and with a much more rapid, intense exotherm. If nanothermite, exhibiting these characteristics, can be constructed with materials available to the average citizen, I would like to see the recipe. I just did some shopping on ebay for fine aluminum powder. The finest I found was specified at about 3 microns (3000 nanometers), which puts its particles substantially larger than the size of those allegedly observed in nanothermite (40 nanometer thick platelets). Also, common aluminum dust (as sold on ebay and elsewhere, and as included in some paints) may lack a thin coating of silicon, which may be needed to prevent premature oxidation of the aluminum (which would reduce the amount of energy available for release). Wildbear (talk) 05:30, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Couple of things. First, you may have the idea I have a negative view of/criticize people as conspiracy theorists regularly. This will probably shock you, when you have a few minutes scan this archive starting with this section Talk:New_World_Order_(conspiracy_theory)/Archive_3#NPOV_violation.3F and see the efforts I pursued for over a full year- that's right over a year, I fought with him all the way through the next archive as well- to do anything I could to bring balance of truth to that (still) absurd article. My problem with 9/11 CT's? Is that since it is still such a far out possibility argued by so many morons (not you, apparantly and I did look through all your talk page entries- except for a passage about blasting caps I saw little to pick at) with such ridiculous talking points all they are doing is proving this apologist Loremaster and the bulk of academia like Domhoff who suck up to the elite, that they are right. It's turning off the general public and reasonable people from scrutinizing less sensational activities by similar people. They are tuning out completely.

To be clear I believe controlled demolition is so unlikely it borders the absurd, yet if someone told me tommorrow they had a cancelled check from Cheney to Bin Laden and a tape of h8im soliciting this massive "hit" I'm on board, that is reasonable.

And then I am going to have to take you aside and look you deep in the eye and say brother I have spent 9 years now debating the Iraq war and ME WOT policy with some heavy people, including Noam Chomsky and academics on both sides of the aisle and while I have no degree I was reading over 1000 wpm in 4th grade and remember most of what I scan at that speed and I tell you this why?

I've taken it all in and debated so many war critics who complain they were lied to by Bush but don't even want the facts now, if that's the way it went down, if the PNAC needed another pearl harbor, with what I know about the conditions and maneuviering of various parties around 2000 or so.... they did what they had to do and had they not you and I and 99% of America would not recognize the world we would see outside our doors right now.

The American public would never have supported a full scale invasion and occupation of Iraq with anything less nor would we have gotten away with it before the UN or the world. Our long term competitors Russia, China, and France, allied with Saddam AND Iran AND Venezuela were about to accomplish what most of the world has long wanted and still may be in the works doing now- remove the dollar as world reserve currency, and at that time shut American interests out of the middle east and its energy resources. I have sat back flabbergasted watching war critics talk about Saddam not being a threat but ignore he was about to do what we did to the Soviet Union-destroy our economy by using oil as a weapon with the help of nearly everyone we in turn have screwed to get on top. I don't pretend to think for a minute you will buy this but I have plenty of facts to build these assertions on and many analysts have long agreed about Iraq being over petrodollar hegemony. Americans are too ignorant and immature to have supported a war for our own very survival. Do not take this as approval for an inside job if that is what happened. I would have supported a war to retain dollar hegemony tied on to real physical threat by Saddam to attack allies we agreed to protect. (instrumental would be his invasion of KSA and inciting overthrow of the royals as the dollar collapsed and internal unrest occurred. We would lose KSA's exports to us overnight with fundamentalists making it permanent out of spite. In addition imagine China being given sole access to the world's last high pressure light sweet crude oilfields, imagine what they would extract with their available drilling resources! Their expansion would swallow us whole in that region- these contracts were about to be consumated, fact)

In April 2002 after seeing Saddam appear on Al Jazeera inviting terrorists to wage suicide bombing attacks against Israel with increased cash rewards, and then organizing emergency summits with Arab leaders attempting oil embargoes against the US and Israel after Israel's expected harsh reprisals, I knew exactly what he was up to and started frequenting forums supporting his immediate annihilation even before Bush did. If nothing else then for his defiance so close to 9/11. However it was apparant he knew what he was doing. Saddam was going to play the number 2 of a 1-2 combination off 9/11 to rid us from his hair for good. We were falling into his trap by alienating all his neighbors by seizing their assets over terrorist activities. News reports showed even moderate nations' capitals with thousands of anti american protestors marching in contempt for Israel with their pro-US leaders warily watching them-read this article and understand this was all Saddam's work and no accident. Iran was onboard for the Arab embargo, willing to forgive their differences with Saddam and join him in switching to the Euro as he had over a year earlier, but luckily the Saudis and Kuwaitis balked and the others soon followed. Yes, Saddam was instigating Israel into doing what he could not, uniting the Arab nations as one to repel the US and our interests,with Russia, China and France waiting to compound the damage to their own benefit. . (it is important when analyzing all these factors not to isolate each and dismiss one by one as meaningless. such as what could Iraq do to its neighbors, or how could Iraq's oil affect the US dollar? No, it's how could Iraq's oil affect the US dollar when the combined drilling assets of 2 superpowers and a third equally proficient in exploration tap unexploited fields equal to the Saudis and topple the Saudis as top producers. This turns the world energy market upside down and completely against US influence and the dollar becomes near worthless in a matter of weeks or months. Add a rearmed Saddam walking into a weakened by dollar crash KSA out of revenge and we are as good as out of the middle east and trying to restart a failing economy with worthless dollars- I **** you not, we'd have had gasoline in the $30 gallon range.)

I am disgusted by the childish naivity of my fellow Americans who actually believe Colin Powell should have told the truth at the UN, or that we should have given Chirac 5 minutes of our ear as war loomed and his banks in Paris hid $13 billion in Saddam's personal skimming of the oil for food revenues.

It would have been irresponsible for these elected leaders to not do anything they possibly could to stop this coordinated attack by other world powers to destroy our way of life in a similar way that we had leveraged it from them since '73 and even earlier. Realpolitik is a bitch, ain't she? But next time you look at a bill of US currency think of what a unique instrument it has been. The US treasury has for decades, been the only entity in the world that can print money out of nothing with no value behind it other than other nations' resources- oil- and we give it to other nations in return for real goods and services they give us as fast as they can use OPEC oil. While America's actual output of anything the world cares about has plummetted we remained rich and prosperous. The darkening of our fortunes now is the slow burn we are afforded by heading off a catastrophe in the early part of the decade. I don't know what happened on 9/11. 3,000 americans may have been sacrificed so 3 million did not starve or murder each other in a year of hyperinflation and social unrest. I can state as factual not going into Iraq would have had unthinkable and disastrous consequences. It is no surprise the world resents the current dollar hegemony situation and wants to screw us in the worst way- amazingly by playing their "get Bush" politics, doing anything to discredit the war, American war critics have only further encouraged these players to resent us more and put America on the trash heap. Do they WANT to live like Haitians? Really!

Ask yourself would you support a full war in the ME to protect US assets and energy supplies with no altruistic pretense. Not steal anything but simply protect the status quo. If not, examine your pursuit of this matter to seek the truth and realize those reasons were between the lines back then and still are. If you wouldn't support it you had better accept your own complicity in this alleged crime. You needed to be lied to. Sorry to put it that way, and while some folks will scoff at this as conspiracy theory, I usually challenge those with basic economics education to simply describe what the inevitable result of an ever increasing supply of fiat currency MUST be. I always get silence.

I do have bad news. We didn't prevent all that, we only postponed it and softened its speed and depth. Our economy is tanked now and as I said we're in a slow burn. Those same players are still maneuvering into alternate world reserve currencies, some experts say they are already in the process of implementing it. I don't know that yet but it is possible. You will not see any admission of this shocking transition by our government or big media until it has frozen our ability to withdraw our personal assets from the federal reserve. In other words long after it's too late. It was inevitable anyhow. Sorry for the length, this is obviously a complex situation. Anything I presented as factual I can substantiate upon request, much is common knowledge of the hush hush kind tho, isn't hard to find on google.Batvette (talk) 08:43, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Wow. That may have been a lot to write, but now, I think readers of this page can see clearly where each of us stands; so it was worthwhile. I understand the politics that you have described. Unlike science, the politics are a matter heavy in opinion, for which a definitive conclusion can not be reached; so I won't attempt to question or respond to them. To summarize my position, I wish to see the scientific issues of 9/11 investigated in a manner which can be independently verified as scientifically sound. It doesn't matter to me whether such investigation leads to evidence of an inside job or not; let the chips fall where they may. If the unfortunate conclusion turns out to be that there was an inside job, I can handle that; I prefer openness and truth over secretiveness; even if such secretiveness is performed with sincerely good intentions for myself and the American people. And if the evidence shows conclusively that there was no inside job, then fantastic. I can handle that, too. I just want to be given a story which matches the evidence in a soundly verifiable manner; with no need to cover up, hide, or be evasive about anything. Thank you for your feedback. Wildbear (talk) 20:50, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Science is your motivation, that's great! The NIST's report on the collapse of the towers is one of many peer reviewed reports on the issue. `The vast majority of the scientific community and engineers in the relative fields accept it. How does pursuing fringe theories defying the consensus represent any part of the scientific method?Batvette (talk) 06:12, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

"The NIST's report on the collapse of the towers is one of many peer reviewed reports on the issue." Peer reviewed by whom? Have any independent experts been able to analyze and reproduce NIST's results? Would they have adequate access to the data, if they wished to do so?

"The vast majority of the scientific community and engineers in the relative fields accept it." Perhaps, but how many have actually studied the issue in depth, and concluded, based on study, that NIST is correct? Is the "acceptance" based on faith rather than science?

"How does pursuing fringe theories defying the consensus represent any part of the scientific method?" It's not so much "pursuing fringe theories" as validating whatever premise is put forward, regardless of the source. Being asked to take things on faith is not scientific. When a hypothesis is put forward, it should conform with the known evidence, and it should exhibit reproducibility. (Especially when computer models are involved.) The entity putting forward a hypothesis should not exhibit resistance to answering questions or releasing information needed for others to test and validate the hypothesis.

It might help if I back up and explain why I'm writing this today. I used to have a similar attitude to yourself. When conspiracy theories started appearing after 9/11, I was very annoyed. I was thinking, "good grief - isn't it bad enough that we have UFO conspiracy theories and moon landing conspiracy theories - now we have 9/11 conspiracy theories? (groan)." In 2005, I saw a video of Building 7 collapsing for the first time. I had not been aware that a third high-rise building had collapsed; and what I saw made me want to learn about what had happened. I started looking for more info; particularly for information direct from the government. 9/11 Commission Report? No mention of the destruction of Building 7. Physical evidence? According to NIST, all physical evidence of Building 7 was destroyed. (Why?) FEMA conducted a metallurgical analysis on some steel allegedly from Building 7, and reported "Evidence of a severe high temperature corrosion attack on the steel, including oxidation and sulfidation with subsequent intergranular melting, was readily visible in the near-surface microstructure." These metallurgical conditions described in the FEMA report were never even mentioned by NIST in its report; much less adequately explained. Free fall? NIST acknowledged that free-fall acceleration occurred, but apparently did not incorporate it into their computer model. Their final report shows a computer model of a building twisting and folding (indicating significant structural resistance) while such structural resistance is not evident in any of the numerous videos of Building 7: the actual building came straight down; the entire structure falling a significant distance at an acceleration indistinguishable from free fall in a vacuum. The more I tried to pursue information from the government, the more evasiveness, withholding of information, destruction of evidence, and implausible, improbable, and unverifiable explanations I encountered. So here I am... still looking for answers. If I set aside my skepticism, and consider the ridiculous hypothesis that there was an inside job and that the WTC buildings were deliberately destroyed with explosives and/or incendiaries, then what I find is that all of the known puzzle pieces, of which there are hundreds, fit together perfectly. This hypothesis doesn't present a complete story (far from it); but I don't see any mismatch to the known evidence. The government presented its story, complete to a significant extent, on the same day of September 11, 2001, or very soon thereafter. (Nineteen hijackers; directed by bin Laden; buildings collapsed due to fire). The government appears to have been trying — very hard — to force the facts to fit the official story ever since. That's not proper scientific method; it's backwards. This does not constitute an endorsement for any particular explanation, but rather a desire for further authoritative investigation, with openness and verifiability. It should be settled to a scientifically satisfactory degree - no faith required. Wildbear (talk) 08:00, 9 March 2011 (UTC)