Good morning Don. I've been a California registered Geologist for 10 or 12 years, but have never used it....all it does is cost me money...$200 every 2 years. A few years ago, the law was scheduled to be "sunsetted"....to go away. I think I commented that it should go away....that how well you do on a test does not tell how well you will do in the practice of geology. There is only about a 40% pass rate for the geologist test. Some people fail it year after year. There are special courses that people take that cost a lot of money for the test. I spent about 50% of my time studying for a week...and had a study book for the test. It would be very hard to pass the problems part of it without studying...who remembers how to graphically do a 3 point problem? Is someone who can solve these problems, that the probably never will use, more qualified to mitigate a landslide? Anyway, it's multiple choice in the morning, then you choose 4 problems from about 10 to work out in the P.M. (at least, this is how it was done a decade ago). I found one problem that was simple addition. It took about 2 minutes to do. So, I left an hour early...kind of cool and obnoxious to be the first one to leave out of about 200. One other thing that was interesting...not a single black person, almost no minorities of any kind (O.K., I could not tell if there were any gay Governors), and only 10% women. Earth Science really has a problem with having virtually no black people. Would you, assuming you are white (and I know Don is), be 100% comfortable if you were the only white person in a field that was 100% black? Or, is it that those black people who are good at technical stuff prefer to make a better living in Engineering?
One of the people running SCEC was publically congratulating SCEC at last year's annual meeting about how well they were doing with underpresented groups because they featured some women as speakers (and, the meeting was far more interesting than the year before). I was put off a little by the congratulations because they still have a real problem with non-Asian minorities...

Back to Don's comment: does being Registered make my predictions any more credible, should I make one? No...not at all. Lowell Whiteside, or Don, are probably not registered, but at least have a basis for predictions.
Chris