Posted by EQF May 2, 2006

This is most of the text of a report that I just posted to a number of Internet Newsgroups including sci.geo.earthquakes. I hope that my links formatting procedure will work correctly.

TO: CHILE, COSTA RICA, AND PANAMA GOVERNMENTS

May 2, 2006

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

Ladies, Gentlemen,

On April 29, 2006 I posted an Earthquake Advisory to several Internet Newsgroups including sci.geo.earthquakes, the same day that I updated my Data.html Web page.

My advisory proposed that we might be about to have some significant seismic activity in the western Pacific Ocean area. And I am still watching for activity in that area. However the April 25 earthquake warning type signals that my advisory was partly based on look like they were also probably pointing to the approaching powerful earthquake activity which has recently occurred in the Panama and Chile - Costa Rica areas. The following are two of those earthquakes:

2006/04/30 19:17:15 26.93S 70.86W 10 6.7 Offshore Chile
2006/05/01 07:48:04 8.20N 82.88W 37 5.9 Panama-Costa Rica
(NEIS data)

What I am going to do in this present report is explain how I can tell that the warning type signals that I am detecting are pointing to specific earthquakes. And I will propose why the many deadly earthquakes which occur each year are not being predicted. In my opinion it should actually not be all that difficult to predict them.

These are expressions of personal opinion.

There are several procedures that I am using to match warning signals and earthquakes. One that I will briefly discuss here I refer to as "Earthquake Data Fingerprints."

Just as the patterns in human fingerprints can be used to tell one person from another, I have developed a group of 5 numbers which in addition to time, latitude, and longitude data can used to distinguish earthquakes from one another. And they are used to match the warning signals with the proper earthquakes. The 5 numbers pertain to things such as the positions of the sun and the moon in the sky and the locations of Solid Earth Tide and ocean tide crests and troughs.

Here are two examples. There were two recent earthquakes and two recently detected warning signals. Each of the Earthquake Data Fingerprints numbers (the first 5 columns) has the range 0 to 89. The listed times are all UTC. See the 90-05.html Web page at my Web site for more information on these types of numbers.

58 41 32 7 59 2006/05/02 06:40:55 8.06N 82.80W 49 5.0 Panama-Costa Rica
57 41 32 8 59 2006/05/02 00:28:00 Warning signal

2 76 66 42 4 2006/05/02 02:51:03 8.11N 82.73W 60 4.8 Panama-Costa Rica
2 75 66 42 4 2006/05/02 02:50:00 Warning signal

The warning signal detected at 02:50:00 might actually have been detected at the same time that the earthquake occurred. When I recorded the signal I could have been off by a minute or so.

Based on my understanding of probabilities I would propose that it would have been very difficult for those warning signals to have matched those two earthquakes so well by coincidence.

The warning signal generation mechanism (these are probably radio waves of some type) appears to be extremely complex. It might involve multiple fault zones plus geomagnetic storm and at times solar storm activity. At present I believe that I understand only a part of what could be taking place.

The following Web pages at my Web site illustrate another very powerful procedure for evaluating the type of data that I am working with. Unfortunately I don't have enough bandwidth at my present Web site to store so much information for downloads each time I update the site.

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

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

If you examine the following section of my present Data.html Web page there is some information of that type there for the types of warning signals which were detected during the past few months. It appears to me to have pointed to the approach of that recent Chile area seismic activity.

http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/Data.html#Comments

WHY DEADLY EARTHQUAKES ARE NOT BEING PREDICTED

If you look at the following Web page at my Web site you will see a fairly good sized list of people and groups which are attempting to forecast earthquakes. And with so many people and groups out there doing that, why are our deadly earthquakes not being accurately predicted?

http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/141.html

At the present time I am not aware of any individuals or groups including myself which have a forecasting method which by itself is sufficiently accurate and reliable enough to forecast all of our deadly earthquakes. However, I believe that fairly good forecasts could be generated if someone or some group were to combine all of the available forecasting data into one composite forecast.

Why isn't that being done?

I believe that the answer is quite complex. But a good part of it can be summarized with the following 7 words:

FOLLOW THE PROFITS

NO PROFITS - NO PROGRESS

Important things often get done even if there is no profit motive behind them. But I believe that most people would agree that a strong profit motive tends to greatly speed things up.

Can you think of how anyone would make a profit by constantly collecting earthquake forecasting data from various groups around the world and then combining them into a single cohesive forecast? No person, group, or government agency that I know of appears to be interested in such an effort. And it also might not be especially easy. Many earthquake forecasting individuals and groups want to be paid for their forecast data. So, the effort could be too expensive for most people and groups. The People's Republic of China reportedly has some 10,000 full-time people and a small army of volunteer workers connected with their state sponsored earthquake forecasting program. Can you find any location on the Internet where they post their data? I am not aware of one. Try contacting their government and asking them for some of their forecast data. Good luck.

Consider some other recent events.

More than 1000 people reportedly died here in the U.S. as a result of hurricane Katrina. What if the U.S. government had said,

"Things are out of control down there. So we are offering $1000 to private parties who can safely get into the area, rescue trapped civilians, and provide us with proof that they actually rescued those people, $1000 for each person rescued."

If that type of profit incentive were offered do you think that all of those people would have died? Personally I believe that the area would have been flooded with rescuers. And relatively few people would have lost their lives.

But, no such reward was offered as far as I am aware.

Examine the following proposal which I submitted to the United Nations in July of 2004:

http://www.unisdr.org/wcdr-dialogue/t3-dialogue.htm#34

Among other things that proposal stated that we should create a global warning system so that if (for example) a tsunami (tidal wave) occurred somewhere, disaster management people in affected countries could warn other countries which were farther away. Also, on quite a few occasions over the years I sent e-mails warnings to governments and disaster mitigation groups around the world advising them establish such a warning service.

That July, 2004 proposal was posted a good 5 months before the incredibly destructive earthquake - tsunami combination in the Indian Ocean area claimed perhaps as many as 250,000 lives in December of 2004. Perhaps 100,000 of those lives might have been saved if such a warning service had existed at the time. But it still does not exist today!

Why not? I believe that it is certainly a reasonable and important idea.

Once again, who would make a profit from running such a service?

My July, 2004 United Nations proposal might have actually done some good. The following Web sites appear to me to have been created a few months after it was posted, and I suspect at least partially in response to the proposal:

http://www.hewsweb.org/home_page/default.asp

http://www.grassroots.org/do/Home