This week’s blog gets the short shrift as Sea of Lies undergoes a substantial edit prior to submission to a potential publisher.
But in case you missed it, as of 31 August CNN.com is leading with a short article saying that the Spanish firm that should have been able to confirm it was the manufacturer of the flaperon is unable to do so.
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/31/world/mh370-investigation/index.html
This would be funny (in a cynical sense), if there weren’t 239 families looking for closure.
To my eye, the flaperon is probably legitimate, and MH370 is likely to have crashed with senior pilot Shah at the tiller. But there’s certainly no proof of the former, much less the latter.
Meanwhile, the conspiracists spin their interpretations. Jeff Wise is my favorite skeptic. He’s written at length on MH370 and his blog entry of 28 August is certainly interesting reading at http://jeffwise.net/2015/08/28/new-york-the-strange-saga-of-the-plane-part-that-was-supposed-to-solve-the-mh370-mystery/.
In short, Jeff makes the following points on the one-month date of the discovery of the flaperon:
1. No one in authority other than Malaysia Prime Minister Najib (on 6 August) has stated the the flaperon came off MH370. In particular, the French prosecutor, French investigators (quoted anonymously) and subcontractor in Spain have not been able to make the flaperon found match up to what was on MH370. The official wording is woolly, with MAS maintenance records and the flaperon “not an exact match”. As Wise notes, airplane parts are precision-engineered and every alteration logged. So if the records report that a piece had five holes drilled in it and someone finds a piece with three or seven holes drilled in it, then this isn’t the same part. I would draw a distinction between MAS’s maintenance records (which could be inaccurate), and the manufacturer’s records (which I would accept as being correct).
2. A French news report quoted an anonymous Toulouse-based aeronautics expert as saying that the flaperon would have been neutrally buoyant and drifted for several months a few meters under the surface. This is consistent with the pattern of goose barnacles which cover the entire skin of the flaperon. Had the flaperon bobbed along on the surface, then the barnacles wouldn’t have grown above the waterline. However, Jeff Wise quotes ocean-drift expert Curtis Ebbesmeyer, professor emeritus at University of Washington, who contradicted the Frenchman. “My experience is that things will go up or down–they will never stay statically neutral.”
In a latter post, Wise provides a translation of an article from Der Spiegel (http://jeffwise.net/2015/08/31/translation-der-spiegel-simulations-call-mh370-search-strategy-into-question/). No one has come up with a generally-agreed path that a suspended object might have followed to find its way to Reunion across an Indian Ocean with enough conflicting currents and gyres that drift models have been compared to trying to predict what happens to a ball bounding about in a pinball machine. That caveat aside, Wise quotes researchers at Kiel University as saying that their drift models suggest that the plane must have crashed closer to the equator vs. the 35 degrees south location cited by the official investigation. That is, IF the flaperon found on Reunion is legitimate.
Meanwhile, several legitimate researchers lament online that they haven’t been offered access to the flaperon, its barnacles, the MAS maintenance records, the manufacturing records of the part maker, etc. Not surprisingly, the legions of MH370 followers see this as further evidence of obfuscation and ineptitude at best, and the conspiracy-word at worst.
As for China, well, no one has heard a peep from the authorities since the flaperon washed ashore. Why the silence, especially after the vociferous complaints a year ago and 152 China passport holders on board?
* * * * *
If I didn’t know better, I’d say that there was a book in all this . . . . In fact, there is. It’s called Pack of Lies and is due out in 2017. But first I need to get Sea of Lies released into the wild.
Bradley West, Singapore, 31 August 2015
Now confirmed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Paris as being a part from MH370, after matching serial number with the maintenance records of the missing jet.
There were quite interesting developments last week, that fundamentally shook the SIO/Inmarsat “paradigm” or better called “dogma”.
The first tremor was the analysis of an authoritative force like GEOMAR, whose drift model placed the origin of the flaperon some thousands of miles away from Mr. Exners pet spot in the SIO. The second trauma happened to the SIO crowd, when the French explained, that the Goose Barnacles on the flaperon were of a species that could not survive in water temperatures below 18 Celsius.
Now a lot of people just dug into the sand and tried to defend the SIO terminus vigilantly against all odds, which looks quite farcical instead of opening up to new perspectives. Also the CSIRO followed up with a study that should reinforce the SIO thesis, but wasnt able to, because Brock McEwen quickly found discussions with Professor Griffin, and came to the conclusion that there was no way for the flaperon to reach La Reunion from a SIO terminus if you make a correct assessment of the wind influence. (CSIRO puts it at 1.5%, whereas it should be only 0.86 or less.
Another trial to defend the SIO story was the construction of a “late Barnacle colonization” of the flaperon, to make the helpless loking attempt to explain a warm water species (lepas anserifera striata) on the flaperon in contrary to a supposed medium temperature species like e.g. anatifera. Now where excellent mathematicians and engineers like Mr. Exner and the like all in a sudden become marine life experts is a true miracle in itself, but it is piteous to see how these brilliant minds stumble abount in the dark, ignoring advise from good faith, only to amend their questionable narrative with yet another freak scenario: They say that the flaperon hit cold water but was not colonized by barnacles. After that it drifted very fast to the north and was just in time (despite the maximum winter season time) in warm enough water, to be colonized by this particular barnacle species that like only warm water. This i would call is the “miracle drift” in winter 2014. This part of the drift obviously needs to have been accomplished in less than 3 months , because barnacles are only adult after a year or so and the French did find adult barnacles on the flaperon … Well, actually they took this as prove, that the flaperon was in water longer than a year.
Now, i think, we should also look at the flawed logic about the Inmarsat data. first we were told as mantra, that those data were the only evidence we have, and we have to live with it. The derivation of flight paths from these data became an obsession to many decent people. Then the derivation of flight paths got so refined, that a particular model became a paradigm status because it fit the data, and people like Mr. Exner stated that every other terminus would not be posible with these data. Now what? Obviouly the SIO crowd must admit that the Inmarsat data are of no use at all, when the best assessment they give is a couple of 3000 miles from the most probable terminus, which is simply proven by some barnacle fouling … So, what for do we need those data, and still, if we look at the facts, it strikes me, that were approved by some elite scientists in the first place.
There are the best of our enginers very busy right now to try to corrupt data. They are on the payroll of every larger state and work for the dirty tricks departments of all those well known agencies. And when they leave their state employments they cash in their knowledge with private companies, who might not al times care for the well being of other people. So the knowledge to corrupt and countercorupt the worlds data streams is abundant and the discussion on jeff wise blog proved that. Why am i forced to Believe in the Insmarsat thing by a certain Mr Exner, who says, whoever spreads doubt about the Inmarsat data harms the search?
Sorri, but its like Julie said, when she was banned: The SIO crowd is like sitting on the bow of the Titanic when its lifted just before sinking.