Reply #134: The best evidence doesn't contradict my primary hypothesis.

[Bolo Boffin]

There isn't enough of it to contradict my primary hypothesis. That is NIST's point.

The steel gathered WAS sufficient to test it for design parameters, which is all it was ever intended to do. Under that concievable scientific standard, the only one set for it, it was adequate. (By the way, that is addressing your point directly.)

It was NOT sufficient to exterpolate temperatures that other parts of the core structure might have been exposed to. That was done via the computer modelling, which was the only choice.

Rail all you like against the haste of the cleanup operation. But understand that the ruins of the WTC were a smoking pit of pollutants pouring its way into the atmosphere. The place had to be cleaned up as quickly as possible. Utilities had to be repaired. Life had to go on.

But NIST didn't conduct the study you thought it should have, and therefore you feel the need to malign it as completely useless, when it is not. The NIST study accomplished the job it intended to do in the matter of the WTC towers collapse: develop a model of building performance under the ascertainable conditions of the 9/11 attacks and use that model to identify possible ways of improving building construction in the future.

You wanted oranges and you got apples, because apples was what was necessary to save lives in the future.