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Why are you talking about D-O events, which are generally accepted to be regional or at best hemispheric in nature and driven by changes in thermohaline circulation (like the Younger Dryas)? We're talking about *global* climate change.

For the record, the Earth as a whole was quite robust against the Younger Dryas, but the North Atlantic (briefly) wasn't. I do find it annoying that you keep trying to turn this conversation from discussion of global climate change to historical blips in North Atlantic thermohaline circulation.

Does this dichotomy not strike you as odd to the point of untenability, believing that the Earth's climate is profoundly robust against an event like the one that spawned the Younger Dryas but incredibly fragile against anthropogenic CO2 emissions?

Science doesn't work based on what you "feel" should be right. Science works on facts. But if you want help with the "feel" side, CO2 levels are the highest they've been in nearly 15 million years, all of this change since human industrialization.

If you need help understanding how humans could cause *that*, picture this. The Hindenburg was the largest aircraft every built, at over 800 feet long, 135 feet in diameter, and with a volume of 200,000 cubic meters. If numbers don't do the size justice, how about a picture?. Now, carbon dioxide was historically at about 280ppm. So if you filled the hindenburg with pre-industrial air, it would contain 56 cubic meters of CO2. CO2 has a molar mass of 44.010 g/mol. The molar volume of an ideal gas under STP conditions is 22.414 L/mol, or 44.6149728 mol/m^3, so the Hindenburg would contain 110 kilograms of CO2.

A gallon of gasoline, burned, releases about 8.7kg of CO2. Your average sedan has about a 12-gallon gas tank. For a full tank of gas, 12*8.7=104kg of CO2, approximately the same as in *an entire Hindenburg of pre-industrial air*.

The world consumes 30 *billion* *barrels* of oil per year. Each barrel represents about 42 gallons of gasoline (about 3 1/2 Hindenburg's worth of CO2). So every year, the CO2 emitted by our burning of oil could double the CO2 concentration of 100 *trillion* Hindenburgs. *Every year*. Yet oil produces only 45% of our planet's total CO2 emissions, and even less of it's total AGW load. Let's be generous and only call the total 200 trillion Hindenburgs per year.

Earth's surface area is 5.10072e14 m^2. The Hindenburg takes up an area of about 108,000 square meters when stacked side by side, end to end. Hence you could stack about 4.7 trillion Hindenburgs side to side, end to end across the entire surface of the planet. To put our emissions another way, then, a mere five years of emissions could *more than double* the CO2 concentrations in Hindenburg airships stacked side to side, end to end, across the entire surface of the planet.

Does that help with the "feel" side of things? So we can get back to the "facts" side of things?

See also: Hanger 1 at Lakehurst Naval Air Engeneering Station. (Where the Hindenberg docked, and where it eventually was destroyed). More info here.

Yes! I can see it now. All we need to do is simultaneously fuse 119 deuterium atoms together into one super-atom. If we use tritium we cut that down to 79.33 atoms. (plus tritium sounds more sinister.) Rinse and repeat and we can form the worlds largest supply of wepons grade nuclear material! I knew those damn Frenchies were up to something, and those sneeky Japanese still want payback.

Alternately they could be developing a secret "Hydrogen Bomb" that looks something like this http://www.nlhs.com/images/hindenburg/big_hindenbu rg_and_zmc-2_in_hangar_1.jpg

... perhaps because one of the original US military airships was the USS Akron?

These blimps were actually aircraft carriers. Akron's sister ship, USS Macon, once "dive-bombed" a Navy ship carrying President Roosevelt, dropping a bundle of newspapers for his reading. The stunt was intended to prove the worth of aircraft against ship targets.

Check out where they plan on building these things. It's the old Goodyear-Zepplin Airdock in Akron, OH (now owned by Lockheed Martin - see their article on the HAA.)

A book I have (Published by Goodyear in 1923) lists this place as 1175ft x 200ft x 325ft. It even has a picture of it super-imposed over the American side of Niagara Falls (it's 75 longer). It's also mentions that it is so big that it often form clouds on the inside.

More links are here and here

Well, there'd probably be a lot more of the stuff to go around if the damn Germans didn't keep using it to light up the New Jersey night sky.

yeah, just ask Captain Ernst Lehmann.

• The Hindenburg was hygrongen filled wasnt it?

Yes it was. The bydrogen didn't explode; it burned off rapidly and upwards. Unfortunately, the Hindenburgh was covered in aluminium based paint. Once you ignite aluminium, it burns with a dreadful intensity; it can be found in rocket fuel, napalm and thermite. The combination of hydrogen and aluminium was about sensible as that of aviation gasoline and aluminium in today's airliners, as we found out on September the 11th.

Of the ninety seven people on the Hindenburgh, thirty six died. That's pretty good odds for an exploding aircraft.

There's got to be an easy way to mass-produce hydrogen. That's what the Hindenburg used for lift, right? That's 7,062,100 cubic feet of Hydrogen gas right there.

Harry Braun of the Phoenix Project said that a hydrogen-powered airplane would not have produced the fire and intense heat that brought down the World Trade Center towers.

Well, that makes perfect sense. After all, hydrogen is a perfectly safe thing to put in a flying machine...