Hi Dennis,

I to found the debates to be useful in understanding each participants point of view. But I was quite disappointed that no one said anything about its beneficial aspects of life saving. I asked Andrew Michael about this issue. He said that as it was a scientific forum that the personal element was not discussed. I can see in which context he meant this, but I do wish it had been included.

Now lets take a look at Max Wyss' statement about funding:

In this debate Geller repeats the exaggeration "Over the past 100 years, and particularly since 1960, great efforts, all unsuccessful, have been made to find such hypothetical precursors." Such strong wording was not acceptable in his recent article in the Geophysical Journal International1, because articles in that journal are reviewed. The facts are that the first blue print on prediction research was not assembled until the mid 1960's and that blue print was not followed. No prediction research program existed before the 1970s and after the short flurry of activity in the mid 1970s, funding in the US and Europe dried up. Those of us who work in the field of earthquake rupture or prediction, know from first hand experience that when seeking research funding, the expression "earthquake prediction" in a research proposal to the NSF or the USGS will guarantee that it will not be funded.

There is no question in my mind that we will make no serious progress toward learning how to predict earthquakes, unless we assure high quality control in prediction research and start to fund it at a scale comparable to the funding of astrophysical research.

I can clearly tell everyone, money is not the problem. I gave Max Wyss several alternatives to raising the money and he agreed that one in particular was a good one.

But as Leon Knopoff, also a Nature Debater pointed out to me, there have been vast thousands spent on prediction, so indeed the funding has not been the problem, nor is it today.

From my point of view today, which has remained unchanged since the beginning of my research is that what is missing is quite simple, people. Even in a part-time cooperative effort, those who have the skills, if brought together with everything they know, I do not believe would fail, but succeed beyond their expectations. However, to do so means they are all going to have to take a risk and that risk today is to high. To be wrong, means being ostrecized by their own community and perhaps the end of a valuable career. That is indeed to high on any day of the week. However, there is an alternative here as well. Why not facilitate the use of retired seismologists? Their careers are over, they have the time and the monetary needs are far less.

Therefore, what is the solution, if money and the knowledge is there, but no one can guarantee an earthquake is going to arrive? Only one way. The public has to be willing to live with it and it needs to arrive in a less obtrusive manner. But if the standards remain that one has to be 100% correct and the public is never educated to know that they can indeed survive, and they don't need to be evacuated, then the door will be closed and locked for a long, long time.

There is a lot of latitude that can be given consideration, a host of new ideas yet to be born, but I hope the solution is not so far away. But for some who aspire to go there, or the many that will, what today seems impossible, may be closer to possible than we anticipate.

I will leave this with an open question as there are a number of bright minds who visit here. What alternative solutions could you offer in any segment of prediction by means of funding, research or the format in which predictions are issued, that would open this currently closed door?

From North of The Golden Gate....Petra Challus