Hi again Canie,

First,

I wish that you had contacted me by E-mail about this before posting that note. There are quite a few people around the world who are Earthquake Sensitive. And a number of them including people who used to post notes here regard my efforts as being about the only hope that they have for getting any recognition for the experiences they are having when an earthquake is approaching including serious depression and even harmless Ear Tones. I suspect that at least some of them will be saddened by your comments.

Second,

You are entirely correct in proposing that this nonsense has gone on long enough. Either late last year or early this year I formally contacted high level U.S. Policy Makers and said the same thing to them myself. And I told them that I would be sending the U.S. government a plan that would let the U.S. get into the earthquake business gradually and with a minimum amount of fuss. And I have been sending them occasional updates on the effort.

That effort was slowed quite a bit by the amount of time and energy that I had to invest earlier this year with getting my own earthquake forecasting program running more efficiently and also by efforts to get some information circulated regarding Pavel’s book now that it has been published. So, what I am now debating is if I should try to accelerate those efforts to get the U.S. moving on this. I plan to make a decision on that within a few days.

Third,

I am of the opinion that our geology specialists are providing us with an outstanding demonstration that the U.S. Congress is not the only entity around that has a very poor sense of direction, or no sense of direction at all.

As I have said before,

As you already know, citizens in Italy got so mad at their government officials and scientists for not providing them with any warning about a possible approaching earthquake a number of years ago that they put some of them on trial for manslaughter. There was a lot of publicity over the start of that trial that was expected to last for at least 6 months. But then for some reason it simply disappeared from the news. I have no idea what happened. But the point is, people in Italy agreed with you. That nonsense had gone on long enough for them. So they decided to take matters into their own legal hands. I myself met with legal counsel early in 2012 in an effort to learn what the U.S. government liability would be in such a case.

Perhaps the one, main thing that the U.S. and the people of the U.S. have asked geologists in general and the USGS in particular to do is learn how to forecast earthquakes so that our West Coast cities don’t get destroyed along with all of their inhabitants. But what the people in the geology community, with a few exceptions such as Pavel, just tell them over and over again is that “Earthquakes can’t be predicted.”

As a consequence, I believe, the Congress is now saying in return, “All right. If you are going to refuse to do the one thing that we really want you to do then we are going to cut your budget.” From what I understand, the USGS was supposed to be getting a significant budget cut for 2013. And I would not be surprised to see that happen again for the 2014 budget, and on and on. If I remember correctly, in one of his notes Chris stated that U.S. money for outside research grants was disappearing or had already disappeared.

So basically, with all of the cheering and back slapping you see going on in the geology community because no one is openly demanding that they learn how to forecast earthquakes, what you are in essence actually seeing is the geology community self-destructing from a government finances point of view.

If I were a scientist working for the government and I saw government jobs in my area of science rapidly disappearing I don’t think that I would be cheering about it!

These are personal opinions.