John Gibson Unloads On Ron Paul's Truther Supporters

More infuriating than cathartic, because no amount of yelling by Gibson is a sufficient rebuke to these assholes.

I'm just curious: If fire can't melt steel, how exactly do Truthers explain the centuries-old profession of blacksmithing? See, if fire isn't melting steel, how is possible to reshape steel after it begins glowing red-hot?

Of course this all relies on determined ignorance: The temperature at which they claim steel "melts" is in fact the temperature at which steel liquifies. It obviously partly melts at much lower temperatures, allowing blacksmiths to deform and reform it with a mere oven and bellows. Steel, like all other metals, has the property of losing its rigidity with increasing heat; metallic bonds do not give out all at once as in the case of many other materials (e.g., when ice melts it's a discreet, dramatic phase-change from clearly-solid to clearly-liquid), but rather degrade allowing a partly liquid, partly liquid transition state.

Common glass behaves similarly (it warps and bends before it actually liquifies, though this is for different reasons -- glass, unlike metal, is, if I'm remembering right, an amorphous solid, which is kind of like a liquid that just stopped flowing). Still, same behavior -- you can't quite say precisely when glass "melts," as it melts more and more with increasing temperature. You can say exactly when it liquifies, but that's not the same as "melting," as glass becomes more and more liquid-like, before actually liquifiying, as it gets hotter.

Just like metals.

Again, this is well-known. To anyone who's taken high school level chemistry, or simply wondered how on earth steel girders are made. (Apparently the Truthers believe iron's basic natural elemental state takes the form of I-beams and trusses.)

Not only is this obvious to anyone who isn't retarded, but it's been explained to them time and time again, but they don't care. Chemistry books dating from the 1930's are, I guess, part of the conspiracy now.

Via Hor Air again. Be sure to check out the Bush Administration's shock their one-time supporters took offense at being called racist and anti-American.

posted by Ace at 11:48 PM

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