There are two important topics being discussed in this report. These are personal opinions.

First,

As I have said repeatedly to people who are skeptical regarding the science of earthquake forecasting, you need to be really careful regarding what you say concerning whether or not some forecasting program works. There are tremendous numbers of lives at stake here. And if you say something that results in people not acting on a particular earthquake forecast when they should be doing that, or you say something that causes them not to give serious consideration to some forecasting program when they should be doing that, then there is the possibility that your comments could result in the unnecessary loss of tremendous numbers of lives.

The excuse that it is important to protect people from inaccurate forecasts does not justify inappropriate criticism of some forecasting program. Forecasters who have any sense and experience probably already know how to circulate forecast information without causing problems. And specifically, I myself have been circulating forecasts since late 1994. And I have never heard of a single one of them causing any problems. If a person wants to say that that is because my forecasts are too general to cause problems then fine. But if that is the case they why would that same person try to warn people about the forecasts in the first place if they are not causing any problems?

Once again, where tremendous numbers of lives are on the line because of earthquakes and other problems it is extremely important to be careful with what is said in public regarding efforts to deal with those problems.

Second,

Regarding my specific forecasting program.

If you look at a satellite view of the U.S. or some other country you can see cloud patterns. People know from experience that the clouds will probably move towards the east. And they can make a judgment regarding the likelihood that some cloud pattern will move over a certain area and produce rain.

The Chart A picture files on my Data.html Web page are intended to provide earthquake workers around the world and the general public with that type of resource. They can look at the charts and try to detect patterns that indicate that an earthquake could be about to occur at some location. People interested in such matters would need to read over the explanation files at my Web sites so that they know how to interpret the Time Window line information.

At the simplest level it takes just a few seconds to look at one of those charts and interpret it. If there is a large line peak at some longitude on recent Time Windows and no line peaks at that longitude on older Time Windows it suggests that seismic activity could be headed for some fault zone along that longitude line. If there are no line peaks at some longitude on the recent Time Window lines then the program is not pointing to that area. An earthquake could still occur there. And that does happen. But the program with its simplest interpretation was not able to tell that it would occur there.

Earthquake related files are being stored on my Archives Web page so that people can see my own analyses of as many 6 magnitude and higher earthquakes as I have time to evaluate. However, people don’t need my analyses to tell if the program is working. They can simply watch for 6 and higher magnitude earthquakes that occur every week and then check my Chart A files and the older Year Chart files to see if there was a line peak at the earthquake’s longitude on a Time Window line dated before the earthquake occurred.

This is a complex, sophisticated research effort in addition to being an earthquake forecasting effort. In storing those files on the Archives Web page I myself am attempting to see how well the program is working. The technology is so complex that this was almost impossible to do in the past. But with time the effort is getting better organized.