We here at Earthwaves have, of late, developed a reputation in the quake prediction community as being a tad hard on pseudo-scientists and those of that ilk. As a consequence this board is not as active as it used to be. But, on the whole, I think quality is more important than quantity.

Below is just one example of the muddled thinking so prevalent on other boards. It is excerpted from a post by Frank Condon, who actually has a whole section of the Syzygy/JOB site devoted to him, despite his obvious retrocranial inversion. I present it here in accord with the Fair Use doctrine.

“ . . . the Pacific Plate's Stress Center is actively generating solar induced semi-diurnal stress changes within the Core-Mantle boundary where convective currents are being enhanced by changes in the core related to a Sun-Earth energetic connection” (link below-mw).

Now, as any 12 year old should know, this one sentence is wrong geologically, astronomically, seismologically, oceanographically and chronologically.

- There is no such thing as a plate stress center. Sections of the Earth's crust millions of square miles in extent just don't behave anything like a solid unit, and static stress is not transferred over such vast areas.

- The Pacific Plate, particularly its central portions, lies under tens of thousands of feet of H2O - a very dense material which responds very sluggishly to additions of heat. Thus, even 20 feet down, any "semi-diurnal" changes from solar energy are entirely ironed out. The water at the depth of the plate (under a further thousand feet of sediment) experiences changes in chemistry, temperature, current etc. over periods of centuries or millennia, not "semi-diurnally" (two or four times a day, depending on usage and interpretation). Or is Condon postulating some new, undefined and unknown type of energy source?

- Even if somehow the sun, 93 million miles away, was somehow diurnally affecting conditions within the Pacific Plate under all that water and sediment, we are further asked to believe that that, in turn, is effecting a change in the core/mantle boundary, 1800 miles beneath the Earth’s surface.

- But, wait! It gets even better! Condon further states that the change at the core/mantle boundary is causing “enhancement” of the convective currents there. Can he possibly be unaware that any change in the convection there would make itself known at the Earth’s crust some 100 million years later? In the context of his full article, he is providing a warning of increased quake activity. I’ll set my alarm clock.

- The article has a strong flavor of postdiction inasmuch as he implies a quake in Vanuatu, which preceded his post by 4 hours, was due to the aforesaid chain of events.

This nonsense is not harmless. People turn to the Internet to get information. Many of them are naïve or otherwise unable to separate the wheat from the chaff.

• Condon Post