[Warning: Opinion piece below.] Are you looking to buy a luxurious home in Novi, Michigan? Check out Mark Guidobono’s latest development, called Terra on 9 Mile Road, by his company Cambridge Builders. Make sure to ask the sales rep about the sewer and water system inside these multi-million dollar homes to see how your toilet and drinking water flows.
Guidobono built other homes in Novi like Bellagio and Tuscany, but none claim to have their very own forest swamp in their backyards, where a two-year City of Novi dewatering project has emptied 13 ponds and hundreds of acres of watershed all so Guidobono’s company can make money selling homes on swamp land – or as they would call it down south – the BAYOU.
The area is a protected watershed for the Huron River area, but don’t tell that to the City of Novi council and mayor who let their city manager Peter “the Ogre” Auger destroy properties of existing homes with a wackadoodle sewer project that has no completion date and is dumping millions of gallons of underground river water on to surrounding land.
Novi Mayor Bob Gatt authorized the use of public ENTERPRISE FUNDS to benefit Guidobono’s private project at Terra.
Properties are being destroyed with ground river water spewing everywhere, but where it should be going – into the Huron Valley protected watershed.
Inquiring minds want to know if the Novi City Council actually planned for the area to be stripped of the wetlands so they could sell reclaimed land in the future to investment companies like BlackRock that are buying up whole neighborhoods to turn into rental properties? Just askin’.
If you are not familiar with this project, open and read the link below:
By Alan Cameron Page, Research Forester Green Diamond Systems
“We must learn to reject as total evil the conception that the common good is served by the abolition of individual rights. General happiness cannot be created out of general suffering and self-immolation. The only happy society is one of happy individuals.
One cannot have a healthy forest made up of rotten trees.
The power of society must always be limited by the basic, inalienable rights of the individual. The right of liberty means man’s right to individual action, individual choice, individual initiative and individual property. Without the right to private property no independent action is possible.” From KID ATLAS pg 59
Forest Processes – from tree to regional forest cover
A tree is called a tree because of the structure that evolves from the specific ways that resource use is controlled, allocated and promoted. This set of tree specific “goals” appear to apply to most such vertically committed organisms that this author has encountered (palm trees and bamboo have different growth processes).
Forests and trees grow and mature on a time frame that is much shorter than either the soil formation processes, the geologic based topographic change or the solar / galactic impacts of known cyclic nature. There also appear to be very rapid external (solar or galactic) affects that can occur without warning and change everything in their path. Forests of any stage may not be any impediment to such impacts.
Forests are groups of trees that compete for resources among themselves to survive for very long periods in comparison to a human generation.
Trees as Part of a Forest
Trees produce sugar and other compounds in the leaves or needles on the branches. The tree may use these items as a currency that may be released to different parts of the tree for the accomplishment of the “goals” of that tree or they may be stored as “savings” for later use.
Sugar is made in several steps from CO2 and water using light as an energy source to break the CO2 into carbon a component of the sugar and O2 a waste product. Wood is formed from the combination of sugar and other compounds into a wide range of cell types. The cells form where the are needed to do “jobs” that may change over time. This group of processes makes up the “economy of the tree”; it functions normally without money.
The Natural Forest
Much of this region’s forest is basically “abandoned”, a place not touched / “managed” by humans within 15+ years. This forest comprises most of the rural sector of this region. The oldest privately held forest here is between 70 to 150 years old.
There are many different reasons for forest ownership and the capabilities of each owner may differ from their neighbors, thus resulting in a myriad of small blocks of land with trees of different age classes and species structures. All these micro-differences exist within this aging population of the regional forest that originated from a near “clean slate” after the wholesale abandonment of the prior agricultural endeavors.
“Natural” forest found anywhere is composed of the dominant species enabled by the climatic zone and the moderating influences of large rivers, lakes, reservoirs, and sea shores as well as the topographic profile left by the geologic processes mentioned above. Plantations are affected by the same environment but the early sorting has been done by choices made by humans. Later as the stand ages and resources become more limiting the “sorting” inevitably picks up again to lessen the competition as the trees get larger.
Much of this forest originated from the abandonment of fields where sheep or other stock were raised to supply raw material to local water powered mills that could upgrade the items into higher value products before export. Wherever transport, labor, and funding was possible or available forest products may have been recovered before other less-time-dependent crops were tried.
There are examples everywhere of the sequence of local tree species recolonizing fields or openings that have been recently abandoned or created. This haphazard natural revegetation is happening because there is no recognition of the value of early recolonization of such land with potentially humanly desirable species – this sequence is ongoing and normal. However, this natural sequence frequently results in an initial forest of short lived-early successional species,many of which are “weed” trees that will have little value for anything beyond firewood or other energy production. This is not necessarily bad, but it removes this land as a future value source in the short run – this fits in with other official agendas as we will see.
With sufficient time the vertical habit of trees may sort out species that are able to survive and produce valuable wood for human use. There may be intrinsic value to any species or form of tree, but the industrial culture appears to have chosen to ignore that value.
Tending a Forest
Natural processes happen as if by chance and may be viewed as just the way things are. However, humans live in a different time horizon than many trees and the natural sorting of species and tree-stem-forms may take so long as to appear impossible to repeat. We will address the issues around this set of processes briefly. This care bridges all of the three main areas of interest, Rural Stability, Cultural Limitations, and Economics.
Any gardener knows that carrots do not grow well and will not yield a good crop without help from the gardener’s well timed effort in all of the following activities – failure to follow through will reduce the crop yield:
1) providing a place for good carrot growth (deep soil, lack of rocks, lack of overhead vegetation, etc.),
2) planting the seed at the correct spacing and depth, thinning at an appropriate time,
3) regular weeding,
4) keeping chipmunks, rabbits and woodchucks to a minimum, and
5) finally harvesting the crop without damage.
Such tending of short term crops requires investment most of which can (currently) only be compensated with interest when a harvest happens. Annual crops provide liquidity that is closely tied to the human time scale. Even so maintenance of soil fertility may have long term costs that are avoided wherever possible.
Without the regular tending of forests there is a lot of change that can be missed which may result in large loses of potential income. The picture of a dead red oak is such an unexpected event that happened to a very productive portion of a holding during a gypsy moth attack. Note also the trees that are dead in the back of the picture. Many of these trees were just out competed and be ascribed to natural mortality that occurs as a stand ages.
Alan Page has joined our AIM team to help educate us about forest management, a subject many of us may not have taken up in secondary school, college, or self-education. We asked Alan to tell us a bit about himself so that you know his background. Alan writes:
“I grew up in a small wooded community in eastern NY, went to a one room school with one teacher and 6 grades and had more education than the system has allowed me to use. I have worked to foster stable healthy forests wherever I have landed mostly in the NE for nearly 60 years.
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After the engineered depression of the 70s and 80s in which we lost nearly 1000 acres of land we had hoped would serve as a base to train foresters, our family built a very small consulting business, bought a medium sized band sawmill and worked to demonstrate what regular forest treatment could produce. During that time it has become clear that there were/are forces working to stop entities such as ours from being successful.
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In that process I have watched the various climate theories develop and change as have I. Attached are files about the early work that I used as a base to begin intensive research that has led me to AIM. As a result of these studies I am convinced that the environmentalism of today is a fabricated half truth that needs to be more fully researched and the questionable parts exposed for the fraud that they are and then be replaced with real systems that can be locally developed, maintained, and operated.
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This I believe will require a return to the land for much of the population of the world and integration of the energy systems and legal system modifications that Aim and others are now discussing.”
By Alan Cameron Page, Research Forester Green Diamond Systems
Current opportunities for sustainable living in the northeast corridor of North America – a forest perspective.
The observations and comments in this column come from a long period of searching for reasons why the good things related to rural life and forest culture have been so difficult to repeat (continue). These observations were based on experience within the northeastern corridor and scattered other areas of the North American continent, and several tropical forests as well.
There are five sections of concern that will be reviewed, Forests, Local Use, Foods, Sustainability, and The Hidden Agenda. Really there are three main areas of interest, Rural Stability, Cultural Limitations, and Economics. These very different areas will occasionally be tied together. If you are aware of some dysfunction, choosing not to understand how we got there and what is being or can be done about it will guarantee that you may not be able to be part of the change. Pray for those who are doing the research and or are on the front lines of change.
The group responsible for the experience reported on here believes that any human being has infinite worth as formed at birth. We hope each one may be able to grow to their potential with suitable food, shelter, and resources – without abuse. We also hope that humanity as a whole may regard the Earth-terrestrial- environment that cradled them as something to be cared for and passed on to future generations in as good or better condition than they found it. Such care does not guarantee that the earth surficial environment can or will survive in such a state, but it shows that at least those who did the caring hoped that others would be able to enjoy the same environments.
There exist a number of unexplained phenomena that suggest that the trend toward the absolute ruination of earth ecosystems are being directed by those who benefit the most from that course of action, and that there may be a series of measures that this same “elite” group have taken to protect themselves regardless of what occurs over time. This is a loaded area that must be unpacked carefully and communicated broadly. The future proves the past.
Forest Observations
There appears to be a general consensus that significant expanses of forest cover may be valuable for the oceanic and earth terrestrial environments wherever it can occur.
In many cases the advance of human based “value” production requires the removal of some existing forest. Forest cover returns rapidly once humanity ceases to keep tree growth from reclaiming the land.
These photos show some of the change of human goals. The current dependence on technology and agriculture was a profound departure from the hunter gatherer stage where humanity took what nature provided and when that bounty had been harvested the whole population moved to a new location to repeat the same or another process to sustain the population. The forest shown in these photos is mined for timber value periodically and left to recover between mining episodes.
If forests are as important as some expect, then it is appropriate to look carefully at the reasons for the lack of concern (or worse) for the destabilization of local rural people who should be able to care for the forest of their area for their own long term direct benefit? This discussion will resurface throughout this document.
Geologic History
Forests exist on the geologic base present whenever and wherever a group of tree seedlings are able to become established. The trees that compose a forest take what is there and make the “best” they can of it, while competing among the inhabitants for survival. In the process, the trees modify the surface materials to extract what they need to exist and prosper.
Tree roots actually break down rock fragments into mineral constituents and may take up and store such products for current or later use. In the process trees make top soil from rock flour and parent material fragments. It is normal for those places that are higher than the base level of local streams to be lowered over time and that places that are low will be filled in with both erosive deposits and organic matter that collects there.
The “protection” messages that fill the environmental material offered to the public today are a form of misinformation because it is not in humanity’s power to stop this process.
What needs to be understood is that we are here to be ourselves living among these natural processes as long as a stable environment persists, but there is no guarantee that being good stewards will stop massive change.
General Processes
Throughout the region past geologic events have formed and modified the rock parent material of ancient sea beds, material from other continents or intrusive flows of magma (either laterally or from below) into the hills and valleys of the region. This folding, faulting and intrusion has left very variable basement rock strata. It appears that the
passage of our solar system through the surrounding galactic region has the possibility of changing the solar characteristics without notice, and that there is a solar cycle that causes massive change in solar impact on the Earth magnetosphere. The existence of this cycle has been studied and the results of these studies have been hidden from the general public. The impact of this suppression of information regarding the processes of and timing of this catastrophic change may cause massive loss of life that may not have been necessary if appropriate preparations had been made by and for all. This area is one which will be expanded upon as time and interest permits.
Local Variability of Forest Potential
Local conditions may differ widely due to the variability of rock strength and resistance to erosion that result from being bent into different shapes. In some areas there may be many vertically dipping beds of partially metamorphosed shales and other sedimentary components. In other areas the base rock formation process could have been very different. A portion of eastern Massachusetts is underlain by an enormous batholith that formed by melting and intrusion from below. It is hard to imagine the compression and intense heating required to modify these originally flat lying deposits.
The much more recent repeated glaciations have modified the basement rock-controlled-landforms, north of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, by scouring, erosion and variable deposition of rock debris from other areas. Areas south of this region have been affected by the change in sea level that the formation, advance and retreat of these glaciers caused, and geologic events of a similar nature (plate tectonics) but that happened at a different (more ancient) time period. Further south the weathering of surface material has gone on for a much longer period – the glaciated soils are geologically very young.
These events have provided geologists with a very complicated puzzle to solve. The evolving detail about solar cycles and Earth dynamics has not been adequately incorporated into this scenario.
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“Natural” forest found anywhere is composed of the dominant species enabled by the climatic zone and the moderating influences of large rivers, lakes, reservoirs, and sea shores as well as the topographic profile left by the geologic processes mentioned above. Plantations are affected by the same environment but the early sorting has been done by choices made by humans. Later as the stand ages and resources become more limiting the “sorting” inevitably picks up again to lessen the competition as the trees get larger.
