Actually, I'm not implying anything in that article; I'm quoting someone (Jim Hoffman) who is outright declaring that the NIST report is contradictory in certain regards. If anyone is cherry picking, it'd be the author of the quote in question, but I would argue that far from doing so, he's legitimately pointing out a contradiction in the NIST report. The article in question does need a little mental sleuthing. I'll break it down. First, let's start with the opening statement made by Jim Hoffman:
The Report repeatedly makes claims that amazingly high fire temperatures were extant in the Towers, without any evidence. The Report itself contains evidence contradicting the claims.
This could be said to be his thesis.
Next, he goes about making his case. First, he quotes a section of NIST's report:
"
Observations of paint cracking due to thermal expansion. Of the more than 170 areas examined on 16 perimeter column panels, only three columns had evidence that the steel reached temperatures above 250 ºC: east face, floor 98, inner web; east face, floor 92, inner web; and north face, floor 98, floor truss connector. Only two core column specimens had sufficient paint remaining to make such an analysis, and their temperatures did not reach 250 ºC. ... Using metallographic analysis, NIST determined that there was no evidence that any of the samples had reached temperatures above 600 ºC. " (p 90/140)
He quotes that section to make it clear that what he states next is coming from NIST's own report:
The highest temperatures estimated for the samples was 250 ºC (482 ºF). That's consistent with the results of fire tests in uninsulated steel-framed parking garages, which showed maximum steel temperatures of 360 ºC (680 ºF).
Then, he comes in for the uppercut:
How interesting then, that NIST's sagging truss model has the truss heated to 700 ºC (1292 ºF)., he tells us, and then proceeds to show us that NIST does just that:
"
A floor section was modeled to investigate failure modes and sequences of failures under combined gravity and thermal loads. The floor section was heated to 700 ºC (with a linear thermal gradient through the slab thickness from 700 ºC to 300 ºC at the top surface of the slab) over a period of 30 min. Initially the thermal expansion of the floor pushed the columns outward, but with increased temperatures, the floor sagged and the columns were pulled inward." (p 98/148)
He further hammers it in, saying:
Where does NIST get the idea that steel temperatures should be more than 450 degrees Celsius (or 842 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than their own evidence indicates? This passage provides some insight into their experimental method.
Someone here has argued that clearly, there were pieces of the WTC building that got hotter then 250C. And that's certainly true. The problem is how very -unlikely- those temperatures could have been reached due to fire. I have a very strong feeling that some if not all within NIST were well aware of this and were trying to tiptoe around this fact. Perhaps I'm mistaken and the issue here is that they were speaking only of a certain part of the WTC towers and these were the only samples they knew to be from that section. In any case, the samples they took for this part of their report only show indications of being heated to 250C. Good if you want to suppress evidence that anything but office fires took place, but absolutely awful if you want to prove that the fires took the building down.
What to do? Simply heat up the test steel to temperatures that mean business. Perhaps they felt that the report was huge and no one important would notice. Just how much fire was poured on to get the desired effects? Jim Hoffman gets the relevant quote from NIST:
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A spray burner generating 1.9 MW or 3.4 MW of power was ignited in a 23 ft by 11.8 ft by 12.5 ft high compartment. The temperatures near the ceiling approached 900 ºC." (p 123/173)
Jim Hoffman now closes in for the kill:
1.9 to 3.4 MW (megawatts) is the heat output of about 500 wood stoves -- that in a living-room-sized space!
He then sets NIST up, quoting the following section:
"
The jet fuel greatly accelerated the fire growth. Only about 60 percent of the combustible mass of the rubblized workstations was consumed. The near-ceiling temperatures varied between 800 ºC and 1,100 ºC. "(p 125-6/175-6)
He now delivers the coup de gras:
Temperatures of 800 ºC to 1,100 ºC (1472 ºF to 2012 ºF) are normally observed only for brief times in building fires, in a phenomenon known as flashover. Flashover occurs when uncombusted gases accumulate near the ceilings and then suddenly ignite. Since flame consumes the pre-heated fuel-air mixture in an instant, very high temperatures are produced for a few seconds. Note that this temperature range includes the 900 ºC recorded using the megawatt super-burner, so they must have had to pour on quite a lot of jet fuel.
The first section of the Report describing the fires deceptively implies that 1,000 ºC (1832 ºF) temperatures (rarely seen in even momentary flashovers) were sustained, and that they were in the building's core.
The article goes on regarding other NIST report flaws, complete with some good graphics. You might want to take a look:
http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/nist/index.html
. I'd argue that it's actually the official story believers who are being misled, ofcourse...
