James Hrynyshyn is a freelance science journalist based in western North Carolina, where he tries to put degrees in marine biology and journalism to good use.
Robert Fisk does not deserve to be the inspiration a net-derived term describing a point-by-point debunking of one's argument. He has consistently brought his readers insightful stories about the real world of the Middle East. But my admiration for his skills as a witness to history suffered a near-lethal blow yesterday as I read his latest Independent column, in which he tackles allegedly unanswered questions surrounding the events of Sept. 11, 2001.
Again, I must emphasize that in my opinion, until now Fisk has been a remarkably astute observer of current events in in Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Iraq.
And until now, Fisk has never allied himself with the loopy conspiracy-mongers who claim George W. Bush and his cronies were responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center Towers and piece of the Pentagon. Even in the column in question, he tries to distance himself for that particular constituency:
I have quite enough real plots on my hands in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Iran, the Gulf, etc, to worry about imaginary ones in Manhattan. My final argument - a clincher, in my view - is that the Bush administration has screwed up everything - militarily, politically diplomatically - it has tried to do in the Middle East; so how on earth could it successfully bring off the international crimes against humanity in the United States on 11 September 2001?But then he goes and blows it all by proceeding to raise what he calls "inconsistencies in the official narrative" of that day. First among them:
I am talking about scientific issues. If it is true, for example, that kerosene burns at 820C under optimum conditions, how come the steel beams of the twin towers - whose melting point is supposed to be about 1,480C - would snap through at the same time? (They collapsed in 8.1 and 10 seconds.)It seems unlikely that Fisk is unacquainted with the phrase "internet search engine." While he did tell Toronto Star columnist Antonia Zerbasias less than two years ago that "I don't use the Internet. I've never seen a blog in my life. I don't even use email," this is no excuse for not doing research. Why not have some junior staffer back in London Google a few choice words, such as "9/11," "melting point" and "conspiracy"? If he had, he'd have found this very helpful answer, supplied by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology.
That answer notes that yes, the melting point of steel is about 2,700°F (1,500°C), and yes, jet fuel fires can produce fires measured of up to only about 1,100 °C. But none of that matters, because, as just about anyone with a little common sense knows, steel tends to weaken at much cooler temperatures. In fact,
when bare steel reaches temperatures of 1,000 degrees Celsius, it softens and its strength reduces to roughly 10 percent of its room temperature value. Steel that is unprotected (e.g., if the fireproofing is dislodged) can reach the air temperature within the time period that the fires burned within the towers. Thus, yielding and buckling of the steel members (floor trusses, beams, and both core and exterior columns) with missing fireproofing were expected under the fire intensity and duration determined by NIST for the WTC towers.This is elementary stuff. How sad that what ideologically blinded critics and spin-obsessed pundits never could do -- make a fool of Robert Fisk -- science so easily managed.
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Comments
Science didn't make a fool of Robert Fisk. Robert Fisk made a fool of Robert Fisk.
All science did was point... and laugh.
Posted by: Caledonian | August 28, 2007 8:38 AM
Aw man, that sucks... Still, almost everybody is stupid about something.
But yeah, I can see that this is going to get brought up every time somebody wants to discredit anything Fisk ever says. Like he didn't have enough trouble already.
Posted by: Dunc | August 28, 2007 9:26 AM
Based on what I've read (which is more or less just The Assault on Reason) the administration was responsible for 9/11, but just through idiotic inaction, not directly. I think the truth is almost as bad the conspiracy theories.
Posted by: Stuart Coleman | August 28, 2007 11:13 AM
I'm afraid you hit a nerve with your note about Robert Fisk. I collect his article. My reason for posting this comment is that you leap on him when he blathers ignorantly about science, meaning that you caught his obvious errors. You don't jump on many of his other statements because you're relatively ignorant about those topics and thus, it seems, tend to accept what he says. He is an interesting observer but so highly biased that his work is not reporting but advocacy. If you catch a person being incredibly stupid and biased in one area, why do you slough that off as though it doesn't reflect on him generally. That is a blind spot and if you wonder why people believe silly things about climate change then you might look at your own attitudes when you step outside your area of specific expertise.
Posted by: jonathank@mac.com | August 29, 2007 11:30 AM
Isn't it obvious? If someone strays outside their area of expertise and falls flat, that in no way makes them a failure within their area of expertise.
Posted by: pough | August 29, 2007 3:30 PM
Fisk indeed is widely criticized for being an advocate journalist. But each time I talk or correspond with people who are in position to judge Fisk's work first-hand, they support his observations. You might not like what he's got to say, but I will put more stock in the words of reporter who actually gets out onto the streets instead of staying back at the hotel and filing stories based on hearsay.
Posted by: James Hrynyshyn | August 29, 2007 3:59 PM
Before the Neo-cons came to power, they openly expressed a desire for some catastrophic, transforming event, like Pearl Harbour, that would allow them to fast-forward their plans for a permanent military hegemony over the entire planet.
Within less than a year of taking power, just such an event occured for them. Wow. What luck!
How likely is it, that such a ruthless group, with such grand ambitions, would get their once-in-a-lifetime shot at power, see the very thing they had been praying for on the horizon, and take serious action to prevent it?
Standing aside is the least of what they would have done.
Posted by: RLaing | August 29, 2007 4:49 PM
Personally, I think that's exactly what happened, although I also think that they didn't do it on purpose. I think they were just too dumb/arrogant to bother with the warnings about al Qaida when they only cared about Iraq. Also, I don't know if anyone (including al Qaida) expected the planes to be so destructive.
Posted by: pough | August 31, 2007 6:52 PM