The following is a discussion of some of the goals of my personal earthquake forecasting program. Other people might wish to also post notes stating what their goals are. These are my own opinions.

FORECASTING MAJOR EARTHQUAKES

We can probably say with a fair amount of certainty that during the next few decades, catastrophic earthquakes occurring around the world will claim tens of thousands and perhaps on occasion even hundreds of thousands of lives.

At the moment I myself am focusing on getting my personal forecasting program running well enough so that when one of those extremely destructive earthquakes is approaching the chances will be maximized that I will be able to both detect its approach and circulate an effective warning for it. I am not presently attempting to forecast or circulate warnings before most other earthquakes. That requires too much of my analysis time. And it does not appear to accomplish anything. I will also add that I feel that this is the most productive direction for my own program to move. I am not suggesting that this should be the case for other people. Each forecasting program is unique.

Proving to people that my forecasting program works is not a goal at this time. If I become convinced that one of these truly catastrophic earthquakes is about to occur I am fairly certain that it will be relatively easy to convince other people that one is on the way. My present efforts need to remain focused on improving the accuracy of my forecasts. And since my program relies on sun and moon gravity based routines which no one else appears to be using there would not seem to be much point in even asking anyone for an opinion regarding the basic technology. I will state that this particular science is bewilderingly complex. There are so many variables involved.

GETTING EARTHQUAKE FORECASTING EFFORTS ORGANIZED

Another part of this effort involves attempts to help other people generate more effective earthquake forecasts. The goal here is to save lives. And exactly who saves them is not important as far as I am concerned.

It appears to me that many people who are attempting to forecast earthquakes are unhappy that governments etc. around the world are ignoring both their efforts and their forecasts. Something which I can propose regarding that problem, based on my personal contacts with government personnel is that there is virtually no detectable organization out there anywhere which could provide them with the ability to collect, evaluate, and respond to earthquake forecasting data.

This is a situation which I myself find to be personally upsetting and even frightening. You can hand those officials an earthquake forecast on a silver platter and they will usually have no idea at all regarding what to do with it. Even if they do pass your forecast information along to scientists in their geology communities the scientists themselves will often have no idea regarding how to evaluate and act on that type of data.

If you presently wish to warn anyone about an approaching earthquake you probably need to contact them yourself with that information and also provide them with detailed instructions for how they should evaluate your data and what type of response they should make to it. During the past decade I myself have developed procedures for doing that. But they are unfortunately not especially effective. And I cannot even image how anyone else could duplicate that type of effort.

This is one of the reasons that I again recently proposed that an earthquake forecasting registry file be created. It might provide government officials etc. around the world with a single source of information which they could check to see if an earthquake might be headed their way. As things stand at the present time it appears to me that the situation at both the national and international levels is just about hopeless.

Earthquake forecasting efforts need to get more organized if anything is going to be accomplished. And I presently cannot see where there is anything underway anywhere which might be aimed at bringing that about.