Sierra Environmental Studies Foundation

Reports of Special Interest

Unfunded Liabilities - Our Community’s Fiscal Time Bombs

The County of Nevada, City of Grass Valley and the City of Nevada City each promise tax payer funded defined benefit pension plans to their employees. Each agency has hired California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) in an administration and investment management role to help aid them in responsibly funding their pension plans. Today the taxpayer funded public employee pension plans for Nevada County, Grass Valley, and Nevada City are drastically unfunded. Our local governments have made promises which they have not backed up with adequate funding. This fact should be alarming to both Nevada County taxpayers and its local government employees. Past and present management of these pension plans have the potential to significantly compromise the financial integrity of our community.

Please click HERE to download a pdf(132KB) copy of the full report. Your comments are welcome on the SESF Blog.

The SESF's global warming position.

As an environmental studies foundation the SESF is often asked for our position on global warming. We are not climatologists, but the Board has reviewed the scientific literature and has concluded that Dr. Fred Singer's views on this complex issue comes closest to our collective views on global warming. While Board members continue to post their individual views on global warming here and here, the consensus of the SESF Board is to adopted the views expressed by Dr. Singer, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, in his article published in the Hillsdale College Imprimis, August 2007.

IN THE PAST few years there has been increasing concern about global climate change on the part of the media, politicians, and the public. It has been stimulated by the idea that human activities may influence global climate adversely and that therefore corrective action is required on the part of governments. Recent evidence suggests that this concern is misplaced. Human activities are not influencing the global climate in a perceptible way. Climate will continue to change, as it always has in the past, warming and cooling on different time scales and for different reasons, regardless of human action. I would also argue that—should it occur—a modest warming would be on the whole beneficial.

The full text of Dr. Singer's article can be found here (pdf 74K).

Foothill Furor – Seeking Basis for Public Policy on Ozone Pollution

The technical note TN0709-1: Foothill Furor – Seeking Basis for a Public Policy on Ozone Pollution has been revised and expanded. This (4oct07) revision supersedes the original 15sep07 version of the report which was reviewed in detail by Northern Sierra AQMD. The review led to in-depth work sessions with that agency that corrected and expanded on important details about how the federal government determines that Nevada County is in non-attainment, and the process through which the county must now reach attainment. These procedures are detailed graphically and explained in the report.

Most people know that the county can do little to impact its ability to reach the federally mandated standards. So far the county’s only countering argument has been that its ozone is transported from large upwind sources. The report introduces two new and significant factors to this issue. These are 1) the government’s assessment of non-attainment is based on an arbitrary interpretation of unknown county ozone levels, and 2) the government has no reasonable (science supported) process in place by which it can either prescribe or evaluate any county attainment plan submitted to it – i.e. it cannot follow its own procedures.

The complete report may be downloaded here (pdf 292K).

Brain-Draining Our Future

Very few of us think about the country's brain drain. Our attitude seems to be, 'So what? Instead of technology and its products, we'll just sell the world our highpowered legal and business services.' We expect the income from this shift will not only cure the trade deficit but also make up losses from our historical role as world leaders in inventing and developing new technologies - the technologies that have always fueled our industries and created jobs for the masses of fellow Americans less educated, creative, or entrepreneurial.' We forget that such innovations over the last two centuries have produced a broadly shared quality of life that no country in history has matched. Current trends in critical skill demographics say that all of this is rapidly coming to an end. Is then our destiny to become a second-rate country returning to an agrarian economy comprised of mega-farms owned by multi-national corporations?

George argues that we have a brain drain due to 1) fewer US kids going into high-tech careers, 2) fewer foreign-born technologists coming here or staying here, 3) the resulting brain drain will have near-term cataclysmic results on our quality of life, and 4) the hope for a better future starts with action at the grass roots level instead of waiting for more government programs of the kind that got us there in the first place and keep us there now.

You can download a complete pdf version of SESF Technical Memo, TM0705-1 Brain-Draining Our Future here.

Affordable Housing

A vast array of characteristics make up the issue of affordable housing in Nevada County. What can community leaders and citizens do to improve the issue? What is the definition of "affordable housing"? What role does supply and demand play in affordable housing? Are government regulations to blame? What government programs exist to improve the affordable housing issue? What affect do income inequalities play within a community? Such questions have led SESF on a quest for answers, and this is our updated report. The latest version includes Influence Factor Diagrams, developed by George Rebane.

You can download a complete pdf version of SESF Report TR0702-01, Affordable Housing here.

A Foundation for Community Planning

Generating plans to deal with a community's development, traffic, air quality, workforce housing, growth, safety, health, and other issues continues to be an exercise that ranges between comedy and farce. In this technical note we seek to introduce the notions of systems science to planning for smaller communities.

You can download a complete pdf version of SESF Technical Note 0605-1: A Foundation for Community Planning here.

Large-scale Emergency Preparedness in Nevada County

This informational memorandum highlights the current lack of large-scale emergency planning and public education in Nevada County. We discuss this situation from the perspective of the impending 'bird flu' pandemic, the most probable large-scale emergency to impact Nevada County in the near future.

You can download a complete pdf version of SESF Memo 0606-1: Large-scale Emergency Preparedness in Nevada County here.

Cooler Temps - Dalton Minimum Returns?

Global warming hype could be masking a more immediate climate problem. A problem that could have a larger impact on our lives than global warming over the next 20 years. Solar scientists have predicted the return of the Dalton Minimum, which was the result of two low intensity sunspot cycles lasting over 28 years. During the early 1800s the average temperatures in the Mid West were 2-4 degrees cooler than the 20th Century average. In many areas it was much dryer than average, especially along the California coast. We have already started to see some ocean cooling as we leave sunspot cycle 23 and enter sunspot cycle 24, the first of the two predicted minimum cycles.

You can down a complete pdf version of this SESF Report 0612-8: Cooler Temps - Dalton Minimum Returns? here.