You’ll just have to see this. It’s pretty short. I don’t have enough info to make any good judgements. Are these doctored photos? This stuff couldn’t true could it?
http://www.asile.org/citoyens/numero13/pentagone/erreurs_en.htm
Nope, not true at all.
We’ve had a couple of threads about this and here’s the Snopes site.
And another.
That’s why the SD rules.
[hijack]
I’m having a bit of touble with the photos which show the grass near the building. I just don’t understand why, if as Snopes says, “The fire was so hot that firefighters could not approach the impact point itself until approximately 1 P.M.” the grass doesn’t seem all that damaged in these pictures. (If anyone has a link to a picture with a better view, please let me know.) It seems to me the grass should have spontaneously combusted from the heat, but some patches seem to still be green.
I know that tempertures are lower closer to the ground, but could it be * that * much lower? Paper combusts at 451 farenheit (thank you, Ray Bradbury.) Grass, because it’s wetter, would probably require, say, 50 or 100 degrees more. (WAG) It just seems to me that temperatures generated by a jet-fuel fire must be incredible, and couldn’t have been less than 500 to 600 degrees even at ground level. Isn’t that enough for grass to dry up and burn?
[end hijack]
Burning creates updrafts. Keep repeating that to yourself
When you have a conflagaration such as is generated by jet exhaust/burning fuel - which, by the way, is hot enough to melt steel, way more than 500-600 degrees - the air heated by the fire rises rapidly. To replace that hot air, cool air from the surrondings rush in to fill the partial vacuum. Since it can’t flow from above the fire (it’s pushed away by all that rising, heated air), it flows in from below. In other words, a draft/breeze/wind is set up that draws in cool air and expels hot air.
The grass that remains green and unburned stays that way because it’s beneath the in-rushing cool air and is therefore never directly exposed to the heat of the fire.
Does that help?
I understand your answer, but it still doesn’t seem possible to me that the cooler air rushing in wouldn’t be almost instantly heated to igniting temperatures by the flames above.
I guess it’s just a fundamental misunderstanding of mine of how a conflagration like that works, but it’s just one of those things which doesn’t seem “right” to me. (Not that I doubt your answer-- it just * seems * like the grass should have burned.)
Thanks for your answer.
My initial response to this conspiracy is, “France, figures.” I know that’s bad. I know at least a dozen or so French citizens and they’re alright–they even help me bash France on occasion. Dunno what any of that means.
What I don’t get is why would someone perpetuate a silly conspiracy like this one when it’d be much more difficult to disprove, and more useful to push something along the lines of, "the Bush administration either staged the attacks or accidentallyonpurpose missed a key piece of intelligence foreshadowing the attacks in order to (insert paranoid explanation here). As the ensuing paranoia about terror has unfolded, this would have been the more believeable conspiracy…but I guess this is a little off track.
Snopes & SD rule.
Carry on.
Such as this one? 
:eek:
Ickers! Kind of a lotta “mistakes” to be sure. My own personal conspiracy theory predi…never mind. Only crackpots talk about their own theories.