This is most of the text of a message that I just posted the sci.geo.earthquakes Internet Newsgroup and several others.

TO: INDONESIA GOVERNMENT AND CITIZENS

These are expressions of personal opinion.

2006/05/26 22:54:00 -7.94 110.32 10 6.2 Java, Indonesia
(U.S. National Earthquake Information Service Data)

Condolences on your tragic May 26, 2006 earthquake. The prayers of many of us here in the U.S. and around the world are with you.

Regarding forecasting that earthquake,

I have been running an informal earthquake forecasting program for more than a decade now. During the weeks prior to your May 26 earthquake I detected quite a few earthquake warning type signals. And my analyses indicate to me that some of them were probably clearly pointing to the approach of your earthquake. However, for certain technical reasons it would have been quite difficult to tell that one was about to occur at 110E.

Specifically, my program regards locations which are 90 longitude degrees apart as being roughly the same. So, 110E, 20E, 70W, and 160W would look about the same to me. And the number of listings for each of those areas on my Data.html Web page would depend to a certain extent on the number of earthquakes for that longitude which I have stored in my earthquake database file. I checked that file after the earthquake and found that there were relatively few entries for the 110E area and quite a few for the 70W area. And probably as a result my Data.html Web page has been showing a number of 70W listings lately and very few around 110E.

At some point I might be able to determine how to deal with that technical problem.

Some of the other signals detected before your earthquake appear to me to be pointing to an eastern European – western Asia location. And on May 23 I began circulating advisories for that area. The last group of those advisories was circulated earlier today.

WHY EARTHQUAKES ARE NOT BEING ACCURATELY PREDICTED

In a May 2, 2006 sci.geo.earthquakes posting I proposed that scientific and medical research and other things get done faster when there is a strong profit motive driving the researchers forward. And if a person were to state in public that he or she had discovered a new way to tell where underground gold deposits could be found then that claim would probably draw so much attention the person would not be able to even respond to everyone. Unfortunately when someone says that he or she has developed a new way of forecasting earthquakes that same amount of interest does not exist. The reasons are complicated. But ultimately, the lack of a profit motive is one of the main culprits.

This problem is found with many important areas of science and medicine. It is not unique to the science of earthquake forecasting. But there could be some hope. I presently have a group of legal people creating an organization for me which will hopefully enable me to get a Web site running where researchers around the world will be able to discuss the science of earthquake forecasting and then other areas of science, in a highly protected environment. My past experiences with this type of effort indicate to me that this would have the potential to move many areas of science such as earthquake forecasting ahead at a greatly accelerated speed. The profit motive will no longer be such a strongly limiting factor with scientific and medical research.

Will those types of advances be made before your next destructive earthquake?

I doubt it. But we can always hope.