Dr. Whiteside,

As a scientist myself I agree with you that it is important that we keep good records regarding what different people are accomplishing with respect to earthquake triggering and forecasting efforts. And as you have pointed out, IRC communications vanish into thin air at the end of a session.

But, as someone who is also attempting to forecast earthquakes I can add some information which looks at this from a different perspective.

Last January 25, 2001 I concluded from warning signals which I had detected earlier that day that a massively destructive earthquake could be about to occur somewhere on Earth. And I began contacting different groups and individuals by telephone in order to warn them about it and to see if I could get some confirmation and location information. Five hours later, before I was able to circulate a general warning to groups around the world a catastrophic earthquake in India reportedly claimed some 10,000 lives.

From my personal experiences I can state that when someone is trying to forecast an earthquake it can be essential that he or she have resources available which will enable him or her to communicate with people in different parts of the world with the speed of a telephone conversation. And IRC can make that type of communication possible. Messages typed on the computer keyboard are apparently able to travel to the opposite side of the world in just a few seconds.

For a second consideration, it is my personal observation that for various reasons many people who are collecting earthquake precursor data will not discuss their data in notes posted to public bulletin boards such as EarthWaves, or to the Newsgroups. I rarely post notes like that myself. And although I do not know if would actually happen, I suspect that at least some of those people might be willing to share their data with others using IRC. Perhaps they would not. But, I am reasonably certain that we are going to continue to see destructive earthquakes occur around the world. And when lives are at stake like I feel that we should consider trying different things in order to see if we can save a few more of them.

These are all my personal opinions.