Hi Don, here are several comments.

First, as I have stated in recent notes, I am presently focusing on the earthquake triggering part of this effort. One of the reasons is because I now have some fairly good looking theories for what is taking place. And I am busy checking them and asking other people what they think about them. Another report on this is scheduled to be circulated late tonight or tomorrow.

Next, I am not expecting any major earthquakes at the moment. If I were I would be busy trying to determine where they were likely to occur rather than doing any research work.

I suspect that earthquakes can probably serve as precursors for other earthquakes. But I myself do not usually rely on them for that. The earthquakes listed on my 131.html Web page are for the most part simply ones which were mentioned in some news report. If an earthquake occurs in a remote area and there are no news reports about it then I will usually not add it to my list unless it is over a 6.5 or 7 magnitude or there is something else special about it. That is why there are relatively few U.S. West Coast earthquakes on the list.

It is probably not worth your time at the moment to try to use those warning signal data to forecast earthquakes. The process of evaluating the signals is rather complex. At this time the data are there largely for discussion purposes. But as I said, I am busy with theory evaluation processes at the moment and am not spending much time on discussing them. Otherwise I would probably have posted a note here pointing out how one recent ear tone appeared to point to that latest earthquake in New York and another signal may have been linked with that earthquake in Illinois.

Here is how I presently evaluate those data:

First, I compare warning signal data with past earthquakes to see if there are any matches. That is such a complex process that I have developed a number of computer programs which do most of the work for me. They give each past earthquake in my database a probability rating based on the latest warning signals and then organize them by longitude. So many earthquakes occur every year that without that type of organization it would be impossible to do this type of work. It probably took every free minute I could find over at least a six month period of time to develop those programs. And, they are just very basic. They could be and should be much more sophisticated. So there is a lot of room for improvement.

Next, because those programs point to so many past earthquakes I have to manually look at the data and try to see if there are any patterns in them which will indicate which of the earthquakes most closely matches recent warning signal data. This is a powerful filtering technique. And at times it produces excellent results. But as the following shows, at other times it is still not good enough because it will point to more than one possible location.

Late last October I circulated an advisory for an earthquake in the most likely looking country which at that time was China. And one or two destructive earthquakes did eventually occur near where I thought one might. I also told people that if it did not occur immediately then the first high probability date was October 31, 2002. And on October 31 there was a tragic earthquake in Italy which cost the lives of dozens of children and several teachers. Going back and examining the data I could see that my pattern recognition procedure clearly pointed to both China and Italy. But as I said, I cannot spend all of my time trying to warn everyone about their approaching earthquakes. And one of the things which was so tragic about that particular one is the fact that a number of people living near where it occurred were reportedly worried that one might occur in the area. Had they known that I had an advisory active then perhaps they would have decided to close that school for a day or two.

As I have said many times in the past, I feel that it is our governments’ responsibility to determine when and where earthquakes are going to occur and then warn people about them. It is not my responsibility or yours or Shan’s. But, as your associate pointed out, this type of thing does not appear to be especially high on any priority lists. So, what can anyone do? As the saying goes, “You can’t fight city hall.”