This is a great video debunking the popular “Truther” claims about Building 7. https://youtu.be/7PpsCCTMP8w
The points brought up in the video are:
• “Why wasn’t building 7 ever mentioned in the 911 Commission Reports?”
This is because the Commission Reports were specifically about the actual targets of the attacks, not collateral damage like WTC 7. It was however investigated in a NIST report which is here https://www.nist.gov/publications/final-report-collapse-world-trade-center-building-7-federal-building-and-fire-safety-0
• “How could it collapse if it never was hit by a plane?”
Pretty simple, huge chunks of burning debris crashed in through the top of WTC 7 from the towers. This not only caused massive structural damage, but also caused a massive fire to spread throughout WTC 7.
Truthers deceitfully only ever show pictures of it from the south, where it was not struck by debris, making it seem like it was a perfectly fine building that collapsed out of nowhere, but images of it from the north side clearly show the massive damage WTC 7 sustained from the falling debris
• “Building 7 collapsed in free fall out of nowhere! This is only possible through controlled demolition!”
This is just an outright lie. Footage of the attack clearly shows building 7 folding in on itself over the course of hours before finally collapsing. All footage of the “free fall” conveniently only ever starts right as the building falls, it never shows the footage before of the penthouse caving in.
Remember, the truth doesn’t fear investigation.
Greetings. You act as if AE911Truth didn't say anything at any time since the NIST report was published in 2008. I have not read every page of the report nor of their extensive rebuttal or ongoing research, but my recollection is that any slight observed deformation, and the penthouse collapse 2 seconds earlier, are not well-described as "folding in on itself over the course of hours" and do not account for around 2.3 seconds of freefall acceleration admitted by the NIST's corrections. Sounds like the video is debunking side issues without reviewing the hard data, even though it admits the corrected freefall curve without admitting how it contradicts the NIST thesis.
The video does not show any massive buckling on any side consistent with the NIST models, but only indicates ordinary fire damage, which in every other documented case results in either the whole structure remaining or the upper structure collapsing sideways while retaining its integrity. During the last second of the fall video you can see the top corner of 7 barely beginning to threaten to turn sideways, but something was destroying its structural integrity at freefall speed that has never been present in any accidental collapse. No skyscraper has ever undergone total collapse into its own footprint aside from controlled demolition, except, as we are told, on one day when it happened three times in the same place. The third time was just after the building's owner, Larry Silverstein, admittedly said "Pull it" about the building's potential collapse (and he didn't mean to pull out the firefighter team).
At any rate, 7 is only the most glaring of all the inconsistencies of the data and so is used as a front-end argument because it's more comparable to more evidence. However, even considering the evidence of skyscrapers hit by planes, no parallel to 1-2 has ever been seen either.
"Sounds like the video is debunking side issues without reviewing the hard data, even though it admits the corrected freefall curve without admitting how it contradicts the NIST thesis."
Incorrect, the entire issue with WTC 7 from the "truther" point has always been rooted in that according to them, it was a building that fell in free fall out of nowhere despite never being touched in the attacks. They also pointed out that this was supposedly covered up by the government.
But the video reveals that it did suffer major damage from falling debris and the NIST report which did investigate it. That has been the corner stone of the "truther" movement and now that the cat is out of the bag, you guys are forced to abandon that entire point and instead nitpick over the rate of fall or whatever else. The point is that a giant chunk of the building was ripped away by falling debris and a fire raged inside of it for hours, so it wasnt an untouched building that just fell out of nowhere.
"However, even considering the evidence of skyscrapers hit by planes, no parallel to 1-2 has ever been seen either."
Thanks for realizing this. This attack was unique so people just pointing to some other tower that had a fire and didnt collapse arent getting it.
The argument you're attributing to the video is a strawman. Truthers do not say "never being touched", they say never being struck by a plane. Before the NIST report was released, AE911Truth was already commenting that the debris and fires on floors 7-17 were insufficient to take down the building, as it was the obvious conclusion. They had already measured the rate of freefall, then successfully objected to the NIST characterization as not being freefall, then proclaimed victory when the NIST recalibrated and admitted freefall rates for 2.3 seconds. There is no "giant chunk of the building" "ripped away by falling debris". So if you listened to a truther who was mistaken, you were not listening to the argument put forward by thousands of architects and engineers. In other fora we call that shilling.
I'm also not saying the uniqueness of 1-2 is that they were hit by planes either. AFAIK every other skyscraper hit by a plane has survived, while every other skyscraper consumed by catastrophic fire has either survived or had its upper structure fall sideways in one piece. Thus the fact that three related skyscrapers collapsed within hours consistently with controlled demolition (in circumstances where controlled demolition could be highly lucrative) means that grasping at other scenarios, and taking 7 years to "model" and publish them, strains credulity.
The video is not at all a strawman. The guy who made it went to a "Truther" protest event and got all of their main points directly from them and then showed how each were wrong. And while AE911 might have said that, the truth is that the vast majority of your average "truther" operates under the idea that WTC7 was completely fine and then collapsed out of nowhere due to secret government agents who infiltrated the building before hand, rigged it with explosives, and then detonated it. In regards to something like that then yeah I would totally call something like adjusting the freefall rate at 2.3 seconds is nitpicking.
And this event how now real comparison in history. Towers have suffered fires and have been hit by planes, but never to this degree. A Boeing 767 is fucking huge, with its wingspan almost being the entire diameter of the the twin towers. It would be like comparing someone wrecking their motorcycle into a building to someone wrecking their 18 wheeler into one. For the Empire state building crash you pointed out, here is the size comparison of the two different planes:
https://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/compare-aircraft-results.php?aircraft1=81&aircraft2=251
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fzp0dGyaUAEERQT?format=jpg&name=900x900
Well, if AE911Truth has unintentionally permitted an unscientific truther culture to propagate around their insistence on objective data, an idea that I don't think is proven by cherry-picking from a single protest, then more's the loss. If this isn't settled by an earthly tribunal it'll be by a heavenly.