The America First Committee (AFC) was the foremost United Statesnon-interventionistpressure group against the American entry into World War II. Started on September 4, 1940, it put out mixed messaging with antisemitic and pro-fascist rhetoric from leading members, and it was dissolved on December 10, 1941, three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor
had brought the war to the United States. Membership peaked at 800,000
paying members in 450 chapters. It was one of the largest anti-war organizations in the history of the United States.
Membership
Students
at the University of California (Berkeley) participate in a one-day
peace strike opposing U.S. entrance into World War II, April 19, 1940
The AFC was established on September 4, 1940, by Yale Law School student R. Douglas Stuart, Jr. (son of R. Douglas Stuart, co-founder of Quaker Oats), along with other students, including future President Gerald Ford, future Peace Corps director Sargent Shriver, and future U.S. Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart. At its peak, America First claimed 800,000 dues-paying members in 450 chapters, located mostly in a 300-mile radius of Chicago.
It claimed 135,000 members in 60 chapters in Illinois, its strongest state. Fundraising drives produced about $370,000 from some 25,000 contributors. Nearly half came from a few millionaires such as William H. Regnery, H. Smith Richardson of the Vick Chemical Company, General Robert E. Wood of Sears-Roebuck, publisher Joseph M. Patterson (New York Daily News) and his cousin, publisher Robert R. McCormick (Chicago Tribune).
The AFC was never able to get funding for its own public opinion
poll. The New York chapter received slightly more than $190,000, most of
it from its 47,000 contributors. Since it never had a national
membership form or national dues, and local chapters were quite
autonomous, historians point out that the organization's leaders had no
idea how many "members" it had.
Serious organizing of the America First Committee took place in Chicago
not long after the September 1940 establishment. Chicago was to remain
the national headquarters of the committee. To preside over their
committee, America First chose General Robert E. Wood, the 61-year-old chairman of Sears, Roebuck and Co. Wood remained at the head of the committee until it was disbanded in the days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The America First Committee had its share of prominent
businessmen as well as the sympathies of political figures including
Democratic Senators Burton K. Wheeler of Montana and David I. Walsh of Massachusetts, Republican Senator Gerald P. Nye of North Dakota, with its most prominent spokesman being aviator Charles A. Lindbergh. Other celebrities supporting America First were actress Lillian Gish and architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
Two men who would later become presidents, John F. Kennedy and Gerald Ford,
supported and contributed to the organization. When he donated $100 to
the AFC, Kennedy attached a note which read simply: "What you are doing
is vital." Ford was one of the first members of the AFC when a chapter formed at Yale University. Additionally, Potter Stewart, a future Supreme Court justice, served on the original committee of the AFC.
Issues
Flyer for an America First Committee rally in St. Louis, Missouri in April 1941
When the war began in September 1939, most Americans, including politicians, demanded neutrality regarding Europe.
Although most Americans supported strong measures against Japan, Europe
was the focus of the America First Committee. The public mood was
changing, however, especially after the fall of France in the spring of 1940.
The America First Committee launched a petition aimed at enforcing the 1939 Neutrality Act and forcing President Franklin D. Roosevelt
to keep his pledge to keep America out of the war. They profoundly
distrusted Roosevelt and argued that he was lying to the American
people.
On the day after Roosevelt's lend-lease bill was submitted to the United States Congress, Wood promised AFC opposition "with all the vigor it can exert". America First staunchly opposed the convoying of ships, the Atlantic Charter,
and the placing of economic pressure on Japan. In order to achieve the
defeat of lend-lease and the perpetuation of American neutrality, the
AFC advocated four basic principles:
The United States must build an impregnable defense for America.
No foreign power, nor group of powers, can successfully attack a prepared America.
American democracy can be preserved only by keeping out of the European war.
"Aid short of war" weakens national defense at home and threatens to involve America in war abroad.
Charles Lindbergh was admired in Germany and allowed to see the buildup of the German air force, the Luftwaffe, in 1937. He was impressed by its strength and secretly reported his findings to the General Staff of the United States Army, warning them that the U.S. had fallen behind and that it must urgently build up its aviation.
He had feuded with the Roosevelt administration for years. His first
radio speech was broadcast on September 15, 1939, on all three of the
major radio networks. He urged listeners to look beyond the speeches and
propaganda that they were being fed and instead look at who was writing
the speeches and reports, who owned the papers and who influenced the
speakers.
On June 20, 1941, Lindbergh spoke to 30,000 people in Los Angeles
and billed it as a "Peace and Preparedness Mass Meeting", Lindbergh
criticized those movements which he perceived were leading America into
the war. He proclaimed that the United States was in a position that
made it virtually impregnable. He claimed that the interventionists and
the British who called for "the defense of England" really meant "the
defeat of Germany".
Charles Lindbergh speaking at an America First Committee rally in Fort Wayne, Indiana in early October 1941
Nothing did more to escalate the tensions than the speech which Lindbergh delivered to a rally in Des Moines, Iowa
on September 11, 1941. In that speech, he identified the forces pulling
America into the war as the British, the Roosevelt administration, and American Jews.
While he expressed sympathy for the plight of the Jews in Germany, he
argued that America's entry into the war would serve them little better.
He said, in part, the following:
It is not difficult to understand
why Jewish people desire the overthrow of Nazi Germany. The persecution
they suffered in Germany would be sufficient to make bitter enemies of
any race. No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone
the persecution the Jewish race suffered in Germany. But no person of
honesty and vision can look on their pro-war policy here today without
seeing the dangers involved in such a policy, both for us and for them.
Instead of agitating for war the Jewish groups in this country
should be opposing it in every possible way, for they will be among the
first to feel its consequences. Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon
peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and
devastation. A few farsighted Jewish people realize this and stand
opposed to intervention. But the majority still do not. Their greatest
danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in
our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government.
A Dr. Seuss editorial cartoon from early October 1941 criticizing America First
Communists were antiwar until June 1941, and they tried to infiltrate or take over America First. After Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, they reversed positions and denounced the AFC as a Nazi front (a group infiltrated by German agents). Nazis also tried to use the committee: at the trial of the aviator and orator Laura Ingalls, the prosecution revealed that her handler, Ulrich Freiherr von Gienanth, a German diplomat, had encouraged her to participate in committee activities.
After Pearl Harbor
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, AFC canceled a rally with Lindbergh at Boston Garden "in view of recent critical developments," and the organization's leaders announced their support of the war effort. Lindbergh gave the rationale:
We have been stepping closer to war
for many months. Now it has come and we must meet it as united
Americans regardless of our attitude in the past toward the policy our
government has followed.
Whether or not that policy has been wise, our country has been
attacked by force of arms and by force of arms we must retaliate. Our
own defenses and our own military position have already been neglected
too long. We must now turn every effort to building the greatest and
most efficient Army, Navy and Air Force in the world. When American
soldiers go to war it must be with the best equipment that modern skill
can design and that modern industry can build.
With the formal declaration of war against Japan, the organization
chose to disband. On December 11, the committee leaders met and voted
for dissolution. In the statement which they released to the press was
the following:
Our principles were right. Had they
been followed, war could have been avoided. No good purpose can now be
served by considering what might have been, had our objectives been
attained.
We are at war. Today, though there may be many important
subsidiary considerations, the primary objective is not difficult to
state. It can be completely defined in one word: Victory.
Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan
has praised America First and used its name as a slogan. "The
achievements of that organization are monumental," writes Buchanan. "By
keeping America out of World War II until Hitler attacked Stalin in June
1941, Soviet Russia, not America, bore the brunt of the fighting,
bleeding and dying to defeat Nazi Germany."
From https://doomsdaydebunked.miraheze.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis?fbclid=IwAR2cWB8gPurcMuN1HfkNhMXo_8TxpoKNKOgg1gu8UKOtvDQ43OU0Tvq0_pE
The
theoretical scenario of the clathrate gun hypothesis. Arctic methane
emissions lead to warming and in turn to more dissociation.
The clathrate gun hypothesis or Methane time bomb
(now effectively disproved) is the name given to the idea that as sea
temperatures rise in the Arctic, this can trigger a strong positive feedback effect on climate. The hypothesis was that this warming would cause a sudden release of methane from methane clathrate compounds buried in seabeds and seabed permafrost, and then, because methane itself is a powerful greenhouse gas,
temperatures rise further, and the cycle repeats. The original idea was
that this runaway process, once started, could be as irreversible as
the firing of a gun. It originates from a paper by Kennett et al
published in 2003, which proposed that the "clathrate gun" could cause abrupt runaway warming on a time scale less than a human lifetime.
"Gun" suggests an exothermic reaction like an explosion. The
clathrate decomposition is endothermic - if some of the clathrates are
released they cool down the rest of the deposits. This means that the
only way it can happen explosively is by a feedback with Earth's climate
rapidly warming up the oceans.
The clathrates are not only kept stable by the low temperatures at
the sea bed. They are also kept stable by pressure of the depth of sea
above the deposits. The clathrates can slowly decompose as the result of
lowering sea levels during ice ages, or by the sea floor rising along
continental shelves when the ice resting on the land melts. This needs
to be distinguished from clathrate dissociation due to a warming sea,
which is needed for the clathrate gun hypothesis.
In December 2016, a major literature review by the 2107 USGS Hydrates
project concluded that evidence is lacking for the original hypothesis. In 2017, the Royal Society
review came to a similar conclusion that there is a relatively limited
role for climate feedback from dissociation of the methane clathrates.
The 2018 Annual Review of Environment and Resources on Methane and Global Environmental Change concluded that "Nevertheless,
it seems unlikely that catastrophic, widespread dissociation of marine
clathrates will be triggered by continued climate warming at
contemporary rates (0.2◦C per decade) during the twenty-first century".
In 2018, the CAGE research group (Centre for
Arctic Gas Hydrate, Environment and Climate) came to a much stronger
conclusion when they published evidence that the methane clathrates
formed over 6 million years ago and have been slowly releasing methane
for 2 million years independent of warm or cold climate, rather than
releasing methane only recently as had previously been thought
.
At one time this hypothesis was thought to be responsible for warming events in and at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum around 26,500 years ago, but this is now also thought to be unlikely.
At one point it was thought that a much slower runaway methane
clathrate breakdown might have acted over longer timescales of tens of
thousands of years during the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum 56 million years ago, and the Permian–Triassic extinction event, 252 million years ago. However, this is now thought unlikely.
Tetrakaidecahedral
Methane clathrate hydrate I, methane molecule consisting of one carbon
atom attached to four hydrogen atoms shown in the center surrounded by a
cage formed of water molecules
Methane clathrate, also known commonly as methane hydrate,
is a form of water ice that contains a large amount of methane within
its crystal structure, which is stable under pressure, and remains
stable under higher temperatures than ice, up to a few degrees above
0 °C depending on the pressure. .
The methane forms a structure I hydrate, trapped in dodecahedral
cages made up of water molecules which are kept stable by a methane
molecule inside each one. These are then each surrounded by tetrahedra
to form part of a larger lattice with tetrakeidecahedral cavities which also contain methane molecules. Potentially large deposits of methane clathrate have been found under sediments on the ocean floors of the Earth.
Methane is much more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon
dioxide, although it has a short atmospheric lifetime of around 12
years. Shindell et al(2009) calculated that it has a global warming potential, the ratio of its warming potential to that of CO2. of between 79 and 105 over 20 years, and between 25 and 40 over 100 years, after accounting for aerosol interactions.
How the clathrates dissociate
Gas-hydrate deposits by sector. Only those in sector 2 are likely to release methane that reaches the atmosphere
As the oceans warm then methane can be released as the methane
dissociates. The deposits extend to a depth of many meters and how much
of an effect this is depends on how far down into the deposits the
dissociation proceeds. The reaction absorbs heat rather than generating
it, so as the reaction proceeds it cools surrounding sediments rather
than warming them.
The 2017 and 2018 studies
have suggested only the topmost layers would be affected, while the
original hypothesis was based on the supposition that deep layers would
dissociate. The amount of the effect also depends on what happens to the
methane as it rises in the water column above it after it is released
from the clathrates. If the deposit is more than a hundred meters below
the surface then most of the methane in the bubbles dissolves into the
sea before it reaches the surface, since the sea is undersaturated in
methane.
At a density of around 0.9 g/cm3, methane hydrate will
float to the surface of the sea or of a lake unless it is bound in place
by being formed in or anchored to sediment. So the clathrate deposits
all consist of clathrates firmly bound within the ocean sediments.
USGS and Royal Society metastudies (2016 and 2017)
A USGS metastudy first published December 2016 by the USGS Gas Hydrates Project concluded:
"“Our review is the culmination of
nearly a decade of original research by the USGS, my coauthor Professor
John Kessler at the University of Rochester, and many other groups in
the community,” said USGS geophysicist Carolyn Ruppel, who is the
paper’s lead author and oversees the USGS Gas Hydrates Project. “After
so many years spent determining where gas hydrates are breaking down and
measuring methane flux at the sea-air interface, we suggest that
conclusive evidence for release of hydrate-related methane to the
atmosphere is lacking.”
"Clathrates: Some
economic assessments continue to emphasize the potential damage from
very strong and rapid methane hydrate release, although AR5 did not
consider this likely. Recent measurements of methane fluxes from the
Siberian Shelf Seas are much lower than those inferred previously. A
range of other studies have suggested a much smaller influence of
clathrate release on the Arctic atmosphere than had been suggested.
….
A recent modeling study joined earlier papers in assigning a relatively
limited role to dissociation of methane hydrates as a climate feedback.
Methane concentrations are rising globally, raising interesting
questions (see section on methane) about what the cause is, finally new
measurements of the 14C content of methane across the warming out of the
last glacial period show that the release of old carbon reservoirs
(including methane hydrates) played only a small role in the methane
concentration increase that occurred then."
Timeline with original hypothesis, and later developments
This is a timeline of clathrates research with some of the milestones.
2007 - Most deposits are too deep, focus is on shallow deposits
Gas hydrate breakdown due to warming from ocean water
Most deposits of methane clathrate are in sediments too deep to respond rapidly, and modeling by Archer (2007) suggests the methane forcing should remain a minor component of the overall greenhouse effect. Clathrate deposits destabilize from the deepest part of their stability zone,
which is typically hundreds of meters below the seabed. A sustained
increase in sea temperature will warm its way through the sediment
eventually, and cause the shallowest, most marginal clathrate to start
to break down; but it will typically take on the order of a thousand
years or more for the temperature signal to get through.
Subsea permafrost occurs beneath the seabed and exists in the continental shelves of the polar regions. This source of methane is different from methane clathrates, but contributes to the overall outcome and feedbacks.
From sonar measurements in recent years researchers quantified the
density of bubbles emanating from subsea permafrost into the ocean (a
process called ebullition), and found that 100–630 mg methane per square
meter is emitted daily along the East Siberian Shelf, into the water
column. They also found that during storms, when wind accelerates
air-sea gas exchange, methane levels in the water column drop
dramatically. Observations suggest that methane release from seabed
permafrost will progress slowly, rather than abruptly. However, Arctic
cyclones, fueled by global warming,
and further accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere could
contribute to more rapid methane release from this source.
2008 - Original hypothesis, idea of a fast release of 50 gigatons of methane
Research
carried out in 2008 in the Siberian Arctic showed millions of tons of
methane being released, apparently through perforations in the seabed
permafrost, with concentrations in some regions reaching up to 100 times normal levels. The excess methane has been detected in localized hotspots in the outfall of the Lena River and the border between the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea.
At the time, some of the melting was thought to be the result of
geological heating, but more thawing was believed to be due to the
greatly increased volumes of meltwater being discharged from the
Siberian rivers flowing north. The current methane release had previously been estimated at 0.5 megatonnes per year.
Shakhova et al. (2008) estimate that not less than 1,400 gigatons of
carbon is presently locked up as methane and methane hydrates under the
Arctic submarine permafrost, and 5–10% of that area is subject to
puncturing by open taliks.
They conclude that "release of up to 50 gigatonnes of predicted amount
of hydrate storage [is] highly possible for abrupt release at any time".
That would increase the methane content of the planet's atmosphere by a
factor of twelve, equivalent in greenhouse effect to a doubling in the current level of CO2.
This is what lead to the original Clathrate gun hypothesis, and in
2008 the United States Department of Energy National Laboratory system
and the United States Geological Survey's Climate Change Science
Program both identified potential clathrate destabilization in the
Arctic as one of four most serious scenarios for abrupt climate change,
which have been singled out for priority research. The USCCSP released a
report in late December 2008 estimating the gravity of this risk.
2010 - Taliks or pongos could lead to gas migration pathways
There
is a possibility for the formation of gas migration pathways within
fault zones in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, through the process of talik formation, or pingo-like features.
2012 - Possible abrupt release of clathrates stabilized by low temperatures or after landslips
A 2012 assessment of the literature identifies methane hydrates on the Shelf of East Arctic Seas as a potential trigger.
The Arctic ocean
clathrates can exist in shallower water than elsewhere, stabilized by
lower temperatures rather than higher pressures; these may potentially
be marginally stable much closer to the surface of the sea-bed,
stabilized by a frozen 'lid' of permafrost preventing methane escape.
The so-called self-preservation phenomenon has been studied by Russian geologists starting in the late 1980s. This metastable clathrate state can be a basis for release events of methane excursions, such as during the interval of the Last Glacial Maximum. A study from 2010 concluded with the possibility for a trigger of abrupt climate warming based on metastable methane clathrates in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) region.
Profile illustrating the continental shelf, slope and rise
A trapped gas deposit on the continental slope off Canada in the Beaufort Sea,
located in an area of small conical hills on the ocean floor is just
290 meters below sea level and considered the shallowest known deposit
of methane hydrate.
Seismic
observation (in 2012) of destabilizing methane hydrate along the
continental slope of the eastern United States, following the intrusion
of warmer ocean currents, suggests that underwater landslides could
release methane. The estimated amount of methane hydrate in this slope
is 2.5 gigatonnes (about 0.2% of the amount required to cause the PETM),
and it is unclear if the methane could reach the atmosphere. However,
the authors of the study caution: "It is unlikely that the western North
Atlantic margin is the only area experiencing changing ocean currents;
our estimate of 2.5 gigatonnes of destabilizing methane hydrate may
therefore represent only a fraction of the methane hydrate currently
destabilizing globally."
2015 - Model based on the hypothesis suggests an extra 6 °C rise within 80 years
A study of the effects for the original hypothesis, based on a coupled climate–carbon cycle model (GCM)
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2016 Methane in upper continental slope clathrates doesn't get to surface
Some
of the shallow methane clathrates are indeed decomposing and there are
higher concentrations of methane near the sea floor that do indeed come
from the clathates. But it is taken up by the sea water and from the
measurements made by many scientists, almost none reaches the surface of
the sea. Methane in the upper layers of the sea do not come from the
sea floor and there aren't any significant atmospheric additions.
This is also the date of publication of the USGS metastudy
2017 - Fertilizing effect of methane at continental margins may lead to net CO2 sink
One paper published in 2017 found from measurements on the Svalbard margin that CO2
sequestration due to the fertilizing effect of the methane on surface
microbes lead to a net negative effect on radiative forcing, 231 times
greater than the effect of the methane emissions:
Continuous sea−air gas flux data
collected over a shallow ebullitive methane seep field on the Svalbard
margin reveal atmospheric CO2 uptake rates (−33,300±7,900
μmol m−2·d−1) twice that ofsurrounding waters and ∼1,900 times greater
than the diffusive sea−air methane efflux (17.3±4.8μmol m−2·d−1). The
negative radiative forcing expected from this CO2 uptake is up to 231
times greater than the positive radiative forcing from the methane
emissions
2017 - Methane clathrates only decompose to a depth of 1.6 meters
However, later research cast doubt on this picture. Hong et al (2017)
studied the seepage from large mounds of hydrates in the shallow arctic
seas at Storfjordrenna, in the Barents Sea close to Svalbard. They
showed that though the temperature of the sea bed has fluctuated
seasonally over the last century, between 1.8 and 4.8 °C, it has only
affected release of methane to a depth of about 1.6 meters. The areas
that do destabilize do so only very slowly (centuries) because they are
only warmed sufficiently for less than half the year, from April to
August - and this doesn’t seem to be enough for fast destabilizing.
Hydrates can be stable through the top 60 meters of the sediments and
the current rapid releases came from deeper below the sea floor. They
concluded that the increase in flux started hundreds to thousands of
years ago well before the onset of warming that others speculated as its
cause, and that these seepages are not increasing due to momentary
warming. Summarizing his research, Hong stated:
"The results of our study indicate
that the immense seeping found in this area is a result of natural state
of the system. Understanding how methane interacts with other important
geological, chemical and biological processes in the Earth system is
essential and should be the emphasis of our scientific community,"
Further research by Klaus Wallmann et al (2018) found that the
hydrate release is due to the rebound of the sea bed after the ice
melted. The methane dissociation began around 8,000 years ago when the
land began to rise faster than the sea level, and the water as a result
started to get shallower with less hydrostatic pressure. This
dissociation therefore was a result of the uplift of the sea bed rather
than anthropogenic warming. The amount of methane released by the
hydrate dissociation was small. They found that the methane seeps
originate not from the hydrates but from deep geological gas reservoirs
(seepage from these formed the hydrates originally). They concluded that
the hydrates acted as a dynamic seal regulating the methane emissions
from the deep geological gas reservoirs and when they were dissociated
8,000 years ago, weakening the seal, this led to the higher methane
release still observed today.
2018 - CAGE group findings, the methane has been escaping at the same rate for millions of years
Research by the CAGE group in 2018 showed that the methane there has been escaping at the same rate for millions of years:
Recent observations of extensive
methane release from the seafloor into the ocean and atmosphere cause
concern as to whether increasing air temperatures across the Arctic are
causing rapid melting of natural methane hydrates. Other studies,
however, indicate that methane flares released in the Arctic today were
created by processes that began way back in time – during the last Ice
Age.
Newest research from the Center for
Arctic Gas Hydrate, Climate and Environment (CAGE) shows that methane
has been leaking in the Arctic for millions of years, independent of
warm or cold climate. Methane has been forming in organic carbon rich
sediments below the leakage spots off the coast of western Svalbard for a
period of about 6 million years (since the late Miocene). According to
our models, methane flares occurred at the seafloor for the first time
at around 2 million years ago; at the exact time when ice sheets started
to expand in the Arctic.
The acceleration of leakage
occurred when the ice sheets were big enough to erode and deliver huge
amounts of sediments towards the continental slope. Methane leakage was
promoted due to formation of natural gas in organic-rich sediments
under heavy loads of glacial sediments. Faults and fractures opened
within the Earth’s crust as a consequence of growth and decay of the
massive ice masses. This brought up the gases from deeper sediments
higher up towards the seafloor. These gases then fueled the gas hydrate
system off the Svalbard coast for the past 2 million years. It is, to
this day, controlling the leakage of methane from the seabed.
So, the methane deposits formed in the late Miocene starting 6
million years ago, and the methane leaks have been going on for two
million years through multiple ice ages.
Also published in 2018, the Review of Environment and Resources on Methane and Global Environmental Change concluded that
"Although the clathrate gun
hypothesis remains controversial (21), a good understanding of how
environmental change affects natural CH4 sources is vital in terms of
robustly projecting future fluxes under a changing climate."
Then later:
"Nevertheless, it seems unlikely
that catastrophic, widespread dissociation of marine clathrates will be
triggered by continued climate warming at contemporary rates (0.2◦C per
decade) during the twenty-first century"
They did however urge caution about extraction of methane clathrates as a fuel, as this could lead to leaks of methane.
As discussed previously(Section
4.1), the stability of CH4 clathrate deposits may already be at risk
from climate change.Accidental or deliberate disturbance, due to fossil
fuel extraction, has the potential for extremelyhigh fugitive CH4 losses
to the atmosphere
Past mass extinction events
At
one point it was thought that runaway methane clathrate breakdown might
also have acted over longer timescales of tens of thousands of years
during the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum 56 million years ago, and most notably the Permian–Triassic extinction event,
when up to 96% of all marine species became extinct, 252 million years
ago. It was thought to have caused drastic alteration of the ocean
environment (such as ocean acidification and ocean stratification) and of the atmosphere.
However, the pattern of isotope shifts expected to result from a
massive release of methane does not match the patterns seen there.
First, the isotope shift is too large for this hypothesis, as it would
require five times as much methane as is postulated for the PETM, and then, it would have to be reburied at an unrealistically high rate to account for the rapid increases in the 13C/12C ratio throughout the early Triassic before it was released again several times.
One of the hypotheses being considered in its place is that the
temperature increase of the PETM was due to the roasting of carbonate
sediments such as coal beds by volcanism. Potentially this may have
released more than 3 trillion tons of carbon.
Effects thousands of years into our future
Although
significant effects are effectively ruled out at present, the oceans
would continue to warm by several degrees under the "Business as usual"
scenario. This would lead to the clathrates warming and eventually
dissociating, and some of this could contribute to the long tail of CO2,
helping to keep CO2 levels in the atmosphere higher for longer, as it
gradually is removed from the atmosphere by natural processes. David
Archer, author of many papers on gas hydrates, put it like this:
On the other hand, the deep ocean
could ultimately (after a thousand years or so) warm up by several
degrees in a business-as-usual scenario, which would make it warmer than
it has been in millions of years. Since it takes millions of years to
grow the hydrates, they have had time to grow in response to Earth’s
relative cold of the past 10 million years or so. Also, the climate
forcing from CO2 release is stronger now than it was millions of years
ago when CO2 levels were higher, because of the band saturation effect
of CO2 as a greenhouse gas. In short, if there was ever a good time to
provoke a hydrate meltdown it would be now. But “now” in a geological
sense, over thousands of years in the future, not really “now” in a
human sense. The methane hydrates in the ocean, in cahoots with
permafrost peats (which never get enough respect), could be a
significant multiplier of the long tail of the CO2, but will probably
not be a huge player in climate change in the coming century.
According to Congress, a lawful permanent resident (LPR) of the United States is not a foreign national. Longtime LPRs, especially those that immigrated as refugees under 8 U.S.C. § 1157(c), may at any time apply for a "U.S. non-citizen national" status. This process requires taking the oath of allegiance in front of any U.S. immigration officer, officially making an LPR American. This legal finding "is consistent with one of the most basic interpretive canons, that a statute
should be construed so that effect is given to all its provisions, so
that no part will be inoperative or superfluous, void or insignificant."
According to the INA, the terms "inadmissible aliens" and "deportable aliens" are synonymous. An LPR who is not "removable" from the United States is plainly and unambiguously neither deportable from, nor inadmissible to, the United States. Anything to the contrary will make deportation from the United States a paid international vacation for some and a "cruel and unusual punishment" for others. For example, some deportees could successfully make the U.S. government pay them hundreds of thousands (or possibly millions) of dollars while others could end up committing suicide. In this regard, Congress has warned all government officials by stating the following:
the following shall be nationals, but not citizens, of the United States at birth: .... (4) A person born outside the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a national, but not a citizen, of the United States who, prior to the birth of such person, was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for a period or periods totaling not less than seven years in any continuous period of ten years—(A) during which the nationalparent was not outside the United States or its outlying possessions for a continuous period of more than one year, and (B) at least five years of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years.
The natural reading of § 1408(4) demonstrates that it was not exclusively written for the 55,000 American Samoans but for all people who statutorily and manifestly qualify as "nationals but not citizens of the United States." This means that any person who can show by a preponderance of the evidence
that he or she meets (or at any time has met) the requirements of 8
U.S.C. §§ 1408(4) and 1436 is plainly and unambiguously a "national but
not a citizen of the United States." Such person must never be labelled or treated as an alien,
especially after demonstrating that he or she has continuously resided
in the United States for at least 10 years without committing in such
years any offense that triggers removability. "Deprivation of [nationality]—particularly American [nationality], which is one of the most valuable rights in the world today—has grave practical consequences."
Consequences of an "aggravated felony" conviction
In 1988, Congress introduced the term "aggravated felony" by defining it under 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a). As of September 30, 1996, an "aggravated felony" only applies to a person whose "term of imprisonment was completed within the previous 15 years."
And, as stated above, if a person is not "removable" from the United
States then he or she is plainly and unambiguously not inadmissible to
the country.
After such "15 years" successfully elapse (and without sustaining
another aggravated felony conviction), a longtime LPR automatically
becomes entitled to both cancellation of removal and a waiver of inadmissibility. He or she may (at any time and from anywhere in the world) request these immigration benefits depending on whichever is more applicable or easiest to obtain.
Sample of a permanent resident card (green card), which lawfully permits its holder to live and work in the United States similar to that of all other Americans. Before any legal immigrant
is naturalized as a U.S. citizen, he or she must be a green card holder
for at least 5 years and satisfy all other U.S. citizenship
requirements. Many green card holders are actually Americans without
them knowing, and are thus not removable from the United States.
On September 30, 1996, President Clinton signed into law the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), which is particularly aimed at combating illegal immigration to the United States. But despite what President Clinton said in the above directive, some plainly incompetentimmigration officers began deporting longtime LPRs (i.e., potential Americans), who have permanent resident cards, Social Security numbers, driver's licenses, state ID cards,
bank accounts, credit cards, insurances, etc. These people own homes,
businesses, vehicles and other valuable properties in the United States
under their names. The ones admitted as refugees under 8 U.S.C. § 1157(c),
statutorily and manifestly qualify as "nationals but not citizens of
the United States" after continuously residing in the country for at
least 10 years without committing (in said years) any offense that
triggers removability.
This appears to be the reason why the permanent resident card (green
card) is valid for 10 years. It was expected that these legal immigrants
would equally obtain U.S. citizenship within 10 years from the date of their "lawful entry" into the United States,
but if that was unachievable then they would statutorily become
"nationals but not citizens of the United States" after such continuous
10 years successfully elapse. Anything to the contrary will result in "deprivation of rights under color of law," which is a federal crime that entails, inter alia, capital punishment for the perpetrator(s).
The above refugees have already "been lawfully accorded the privilege of residing permanently in the United States" by the U.S. Attorney General, which becomes a federally protected right, but decades later the plainly incompetent immigration officers wrongfully turned these firmly resettled Americans into refugees again. These refugees have absolutely no safe country of permanent residence other than the United States, and they obviously owe permanentallegiance solely to the United States. This makes them nothing but a distinct class of persecutedAmericans.
They are indisputably Americans with no legal connection to any other
country but the United States. The ones that cannot become U.S. citizens
are statutorily allowed by Congress to live in the United States with
their American families for the rest of their life. Deporting such Americans not only shocks the conscience but also constitutes a grave international crime.
"Only aliens are subject to removal." It is common knowledge that these aliens mainly refer to the INA violators among the 75 million foreign nationals who are admitted each year as guests, the 12 million or so illegal aliens, and the INA violators among the 400,000 or so foreign nationals who possess the temporary protected status (TPS). These aliens obviously do not have any legal right to U.S. nationality or permanent residency.
Moreover, Congress made clear in 1996 that the aliens who were admitted
to the United States as lawful permanent residents in accordance with Form I-130, Form I-140, Diversity Immigrant Visa, etc., be treated differently then those who were admitted as refugees.
An LPR can either be a national of the United States (American) or an alien,
which requires a case-by-case analysis and depends mainly on the number
of continuous years he or she has physically spent in the United States
as a green card holder. The INA makes clear that any alien or any "national but not a citizen of the United States" who has been convicted of any aggravated felony, whether the aggravated felony was committed inside or outside the United States, is ineligible for citizenship of the United States.
However, unlike a "national but not a citizen of the United
States," an alien convicted of any aggravated felony is removable from
the United States as an aggravated felon, but only if his or her "term of imprisonment was completed within the previous 15 years." This 15-year statute of limitations equally applies to every alien, especially to a longtime LPR. Such alien or LPR cannot:
obtain asylum in the United States unless he or she was previously admitted to the United States as a refugee, or his or her aggravated felony was shown not to be a particularly serious crime.
An alien convicted of a particularly serious crime may still receive
asylum, so long as he or she is not "a danger to the community of the
United States," or at minimum deferral of removal under the CAT. It must be added that granting the CAT is not a discretionary act but statutory and mandatory.
obtain adjustment of status unless he or she was previously admitted to the United States as a refugee.
Every United States nationality claim, illegal deportation
claim, and CAT or asylum claim is adjudicated under 8 U.S.C. §§
1252(a)(4), 1252(b)(4), 1252(b)(5) and 1252(f)(2). When these specific
provisions are invoked, all other contrary provisions of law, especially § 1252(b)(1) and Stone v. INS, 514 U.S. 386,
405 (1995) (case obviously decided prior to IIRIRA of 1996, which
materially changed the old "judicial review provisions of the INA"), must be disregarded because the three aforementioned claims manifestly constitute exceptional circumstances. The Supreme Court
has pointed out in April 2009 that "the context surrounding IIRIRA's
enactment suggests that § 1252(f)(2) was an important—not a
superfluous—statutory provision." In October 2009, Congress enacted 18 U.S.C. § 249 ("Hate crime acts"), which warns all government officials and the public by expressly stating the following:
Whoever, whether or not acting under color of law, willfully causes bodily injury to any person ... because of the actual or perceivedrace, color, religion, or national origin of any person—(A) shall be imprisoned not more than 10 years, fined
in accordance with this title, or both; and (B) shall be imprisoned for
any term of years or for life, fined in accordance with this title, or
both, if—(i) death results from the offense; or (ii) the offense includes kidnapping....
According to § 1252(f)(1), "no court (other than the Supreme Court)" is authorized to determine which two or more people in removal proceedings should be recognized as Americans. This includes parents and children or relatives. The remaining courts, however, are empowered pursuant to §§ 1252(b)(5) and 1252(f)(2) to, inter alia, issue an injunction
to terminate any person's removal proceedings; return any previously
removed person to the United States; and/or to confer United States
nationality upon any person (but only using a case-by-case analysis). In addition to that, under 8 C.F.R.239.2, any immigration official mentioned in 8 C.F.R.239.1
may at any time move to: (1) terminate the removal proceedings of any
person who turns out to be an American; or (2) cancel the removal
proceedings of anyone who is clearly not "removable" under the INA.
Americans physically removed from the United States
A number of Americans have been placed in immigration detentioncenters to be deported but were later released. The following is an incomplete list of Americans who have actually experienced deportation from the United States:
Pedro Guzman, born in the State of California,
was physically deported from the United States in 2007 but returned
several months later by crossing the border. He was finally compensated
in 2010 by receiving $350,000 from the government.
Mark Daniel Lyttle, born in the State of North Carolina,
was physically deported from the United States but later returned and
filed a money damages lawsuit in federal court, which he ultimately won.
Andres Robles Gonzalez, derived U.S. citizenship through his
American father before being deported. He was returned to the United
States and filed a money damages lawsuit in federal court, which he
ultimately won.
