Hi Juliet, Thanks for the response.

Before getting started,

Question: If it is not too personal, how is it that you came to be doing so much work in India? I have seen the titles of some of your news stories etc.

Here is my opinion regarding this general subject matter:

As an experienced scientist who has worked with people in a number of areas of science over the years I have to say that the science of forecasting earthquakes and earthquake science in general is about the most disorganized, frustrating branch of science that one could possibly imagine. It seems to be virtually impossible to get people organized and moving in the same direction in order to accomplish anything.

The primary problem seems to be the fact that destructive earthquakes occur only occasionally in any area. And when one does, people get serious about learning how to forecast them for a while. Then they quickly lose interest. And forecasting projects get put on the shelf until the next earthquake occurs. It also does not help that people in governments around the world and the international scientific community are constantly insisting that earthquakes cannot be predicted while at the same time they are ignoring clear evidence that they can be predicted.

What I say to people is that the science of forecasting earthquakes can be thought of as being 1% science and 99% politics. It is mostly talk and little action.

The point is, it probably does little good to get too interested in specific forecasts such as the one you have mentioned that PN Nair is considering. Even if it turns out to be accurate and there are damaged buildings everywhere it will be ignored.

I myself am presently focusing on getting the basic forecasting technology developed along with disaster response procedures. And although I cannot say this for certain, it appears that one organization which could be doing the best job of responding to those efforts might be one which many people feel is one of the most resistant to change, the government of Japan.

I keep circulating information about their approaching earthquakes etc. And although I rarely get a response from anyone in that country it appears that they are gradually moving in the direction that I would like them to move. Recently there was a “Yomiuri Shimbun” news story about Japan earthquake forecasting efforts in which they used words like “advisory” and “prediction.” With humor intended I have to say that before reading that report I was wondering if those words were even in the Japanese language!

PN Nair - I seem to remember reading that he is earthquake sensitive. In an earlier version of this bulletin board we must have had some 30 to 50 people who were strongly earthquake sensitive. And there were predictions everywhere and a number of interesting discussions. That group largely dissolved when that private bulletin board evolved into two public ones. I myself stopped posting notes for a while.

Several years ago I published a formal technical paper on the nature of human earthquake sensitivity. And a fair amount of information regarding it can be found in the following report:

http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/128.html

These are personal opinions.