Thanks for the support note Todd.

The previous EarthWaves board owner an I spent a fair amount of time trying to get a bulletin board organized so that people could post notes about earthquake science. And I am grateful to Canie for the work that she has done in keeping the board organized and civilized to a certain extent. But you can see from the notes being posted here that there are major problems with this type of public bulletin board.

In my report posted to that U.N. discussion board I proposed that we would probably need something like 3 bulletin boards like this one to deal with different problems around the world such as earthquakes. One would be public like this one. The second and third ones would allow only registered people to post notes. With one the notes would be public. With the other only the registered parties could read them.

The registered boards would be for people who were serious about discussing the subject matter. If you posted “attack” notes as you are seeing here then your posting privileges would be suspended or revoked. Canie has occasionally done that to some extent. But she does not have time to be a bulletin board police officer.

My getting my report posted to that U.N. discussion board was also not a fluke. I have been talking and working informally with U.N. personnel for years regarding this subject matter and probably have a higher forecasting and scientific credibility with them than just about anyone on the planet.

The main problem holding back the science of earthquake forecasting is the fact that over the years so many reckless forecasts were made in public by other scientists etc. who should have known better that their governments became angry with them and told them they had to stop or face dire consequences. Human pride being what it is, instead of admitting that they had messed up with their public relations the scientists etc. then decided to insist to everyone that “Earthquakes can’t be predicted.” And they were able to get tremendous amounts of pressure aimed at scientists around the world to repeat that statement over and over until many of them actually came to believe it. And to justify such a statement they set the bar for what is a valuable forecast so high that it is impossible to generate a worthwhile forecast according to their standards. Either the location or the date or the magnitude will be off far enough that they will be able to dismiss it as being worthless. If one does get through then the scientists claim that it was a coincidence and that an occasional one like that will always get through.

So they have an excuse for everything. And they have done such a good job of getting themselves off the hook and free of any responsibility for forecasting earthquakes that there is no longer any pressure on them to accomplish anything.

I work on projects which are designed to save lives. In another note posted here I stated that I thought that I had made a major breakthrough in getting Internet servers to begin using antivirus software which has the capability to dramatically slow the spread of these viruses which can abruptly cripple parts of governments, hospitals, and disaster response groups etc. This earthquake forecasting project is just another in a group of projects like that which I have underway. It would be nice if it were possible to post notes here without them being attacked all the time. But at least this is a somewhat protected area.

One person’s comments here that my Newsgroup notes are getting constantly attacked is largely incorrect in my opinion. I rarely post notes to the Newsgroups these days. And my Web sites are now sufficiently well organized that when people see one of my Newsgroup notes they more often than not simply say nothing.

Finally, I am having to jump in and out of bulletin board discussions these days because of the amount of time I am spending getting that new Data.html Web page organized and discussing the information on it with other researchers etc. around the world.

Thanks again for the supportive comments.

These are personal opinions.