Roger, I have several degrees in the physical sciences and have worked in the past with or for some of the world's largest companies and government agencies. I know how funding and governments work.

Funding for research related to avoiding and dealing with natural disasters etc. should be available at a level with is consistent with the amount of damage a disaster can cause. A lightning strike can do a lot of damage in a city. But unless the entire city is going to catch fire and burn to the ground you generally don’t worry too much about individual lightning strikes and spend trillions of dollars trying to avoid them.

One estimate that I saw stated that a catastrophic earthquake here in the U.S. could claim 10,000 lives and produce 100 billion dollars worth of damage and economic loss. So when research budgets are established each year that amount of damage etc. should be considered. And the appropriate amount of funding should be made available for efforts aimed at learning how to avoid or at least deal with the damage.

That isn’t happening. Highly destructive earthquakes rarely occur here in the U.S. And there is no strong public pressure to prepare for them, a ridiculous situation. I also personally feel that many of the scientists who should be lighting fires underneath government officials in order to see that more funding for the important research like that is made available are instead sitting back and saying, “Let’s not make waves. It might get the politicians mad at us.”

These are personal opinions.