A MAJOR PROBLEM RELATED TO EARTHQUAKE FORECASTING

A person actually needs to be a disaster mitigation professional, as I am, to fully understand the answer for your question.

FIRST

There are times such as this one when I believe that I know exactly where an expected is likely to occur. In this case I am expecting that there could be two significant earthquakes, each in a different part of the world.

However, since these are only probability determinations rather than 100% certainties, it is quite dangerous to discuss those exact locations in a public forum such as this one.

Most people living in some location who hear about a possible approaching earthquake don’t care if the probability that it will occur there is 99% or 9.9% or 0.099%. All they need is to hear the word “earthquake” and they panic and leave town. The results can be total chaos.

We just saw that happen in Rome. There was a reported prediction from someone who is actually dead that there would be a major earthquake there on May 11, 2011. Scientists and government officials everywhere swore up and down that there was not going to be one. But, large numbers of people still pulled their children out of school and got out of town.

Guess what? No earthquake in Rome!

So, even when I believe I know exactly when and where an earthquake is likely to occur I am still deliberately vague regarding the location when discussing that information in public forums and even in my E-mail earthquake warnings and advisories.

However, I have a large international group of researchers with whom I can talk. And I will usually choose some of the people from that group in a country other than the one where I believe the earthquake is going to occur and discuss the exact details with them.

With that type of cautious approach I have been able to circulate formal earthquake warnings since late in 1994. Some of my forecasts have been quite accurate. And as far as I am aware, none of my forecasts as ever caused people in some location to panic. Even with this latest one that points to locations in the northwest part of the U.S. there have not been any problems so far.

This is not an easy policy to follow. Over the years I have had to sit and watch while large numbers of people died from earthquakes when I knew exactly when and where they were going to occur. But, there is nothing that can be done about that. Those data circulation precautions are absolutely necessary.

Finally on this, since I do discuss exact location details with some people, they could confirm my location data if necessary after an earthquake occurs.

SECOND

At times I post a chart here that shows my forecast chart line profiles for both the earthquake after it occurred and some of the individual EM Signals and perhaps the averaged EM Signals. And those data show that the earthquake was probably the expected one. The same types of data for other earthquakes occurring around that time will look completely different.

FINALLY

My forecasting method is gradually getting more and more sophisticated and accurate. And this major problem with not having anyone to discuss exact earthquake details with is starting to become a serious limiting factor with forecasting earthquakes.

So, what I am planning to do is start recommending once again to researchers and governments around the world that they need to create an independent “Clearinghouse For Earthquake Forecasting Data.”

This would be a group of professionals working with the support of some organization such as the United Nations. And they would be charged with collecting earthquake forecasting data from people around the world. If possible they would also try to evaluate the data. And then they would have routines for making the data available to the general public and individual researchers in such a manner that we would not have people around the world going into a panic and evacuating entire cities for no good reason.

There is such a group, the State Seismological Bureau, that reportedly has something like 10,000 full-time workers. It is run by the People’s Republic of China. But they deal only with their local earthquakes as far as I am aware. It can be quite difficult to send them information as they do not have any public communication access points. And they do not release any information except when they are expecting an earthquake. Nor do they even compare notes regarding forecasting technologies to any significant degree with forecasting personnel outside their own organization.

One of the major problems resulting from that type of isolation is that they appear to me to not be very successful with forecasting earthquakes in China. They are deliberately ignoring too many valuable data and technologies that could be available to them from outside sources. And that is unfortunately something that is very common in science, government, and disaster mitigation work. People’s top priorities are often to protect their own jobs and interests regardless of what consequences there might be for others.

These are personal opinions.