I've been away from the board for a while, and just saw all the carnage from the war of words below.
This is a great earthquake board, and I enjoy being a member of it for several reasons.
I enjoy the friendliness of the members, the wealth of knowledge in earth-fault locations, earthquake historical data, as well as the open minded approach to new ideas. Everyone who posts here desires basically the same thing; To find something that works to predict earthquakes, to somehow find the signals that portend a seismic event.

Kudos to Lowell, for his excellent reports, and his theory on sun-earth interaction. His postings are detailed, informational, intriguing, sometimes funny, and always appreciated.

I don't know how this fits in with your theory Lowell, but I'm working on a simalar theory that the Sun’s electro-magnetic pulses cause Earths magma to heat from inner rotational friction (since the earth resembles a self-exciting dynamo.) The heat causes the elements in the magma to expand, become more fluid, and turn to a gaseous state. The expanding gas and magma cause the rifts to widen in the regions between tectonic plates, allowing the plates more room to move. Also, the magnetic elements in the earths crust attempt to align with the geomagnetic field, which we all know is greatly influenced by the sun.
Most people know that we’re going through an 11 year cycle called the solar maximum. What most people don’t know, is that the intensity of the cycle has been steadily increasing since data was first taken in 1867.
(See http://science.msfc.nasa.gov/ssl/pad/solar/images/bfly.gif) In my opinion, this steady increase in energy pouring into our planet could be the cause of global warming, el-ninos, or any number of natural phenomenon.

One final note… There are two kinds of people in this world. Those that think there are two kinds of people, and those who know better. Anyone who thinks that speculation should be left only to “qualified” scientists clearly falls into the first category.

Billion

• NASA sunspot butterfly diagram