"Incidentally - 123,000 ASCE members support the NIST report; as do 80,000 AIA members; 120,000 ASME members; 370,000 IEE members; 40,000 AlChE members; and 35,000 AIAA members. "
i find this extremely hard to believe. where is the source on this? it sounds like complete bs. a/e for 9/11 had individual engineers and architects, at risk to their careers, go in and sign the petition themselves. if this support you are talking about is some head of their professional organization signing on their behalf, then i am sorry but that does not count for anything.
ok so i looked into it and nist does claim that the planes contributed to the collapse, but the ongoing fires were the primary cause.
and for people who are still repeating this crap that wtc7 went down not only because of fires, here is a source from nist itself
http://www.nist.gov/el/disasterstudies/wtc/faqs_wtc7.cfm
"8. Why did WTC 7 collapse, while no other known building in history has collapsed due to fires alone?
The collapse of WTC 7 is the first known instance of a tall building brought down primarily by uncontrolled fires. The fires in WTC 7 were similar to those that have occurred in several tall buildings where the automatic sprinklers did not function or were not present. These other buildings, including Philadelphia's One Meridian Plaza, a 38-story skyscraper that burned for 18 hours in 1991, did not collapse due to differences in the design of the structural system (see the answer to Question 9).
Factors contributing to WTC 7's collapse included: the thermal expansion of building elements such as floor beams and girders, which occurred at temperatures hundreds of degrees below those typically considered in current practice for fire-resistance ratings; significant magnification of thermal expansion effects due to the long-span floors in the building; connections between structural elements that were designed to resist the vertical forces of gravity, not the thermally induced horizontal or lateral loads; and an overall structural system not designed to prevent fire-induced progressive collapse."