EQF;

> What you have stated is just another entry from the endless list of excuses that government officials and people in the international scientific community have generated over the years so that they can get out of taking any responsibility for developing forecasting program technologies.

Hardly. What I stated is the absolute truth.

> The people who generate irresponsible forecasts are often doing that because there are no sympathetic government officials for them to talk with when they have determined that an earthquake might be about to occur. And without any forecasting guidelines they go off on their own and try to circulate forecasts through Newsgroups or news services.

Nonsense. People who publish such forecasts are either anxiety-ridden or glory hounds.

> If I remember correctly, that one forecaster in Italy who was measuring radon gas levels when he tried to forecast that deadly Italy earthquake a few years back stated, “I didn’t know who to talk with about the forecast.”

Yes and he was wrong, too.

> Governments don’t want to spend the time and energy and risk any possible political backlash from discussing the science of earthquake forecasting with the general public. So they have never tried to provide any assistance to the international earthquake forecasting community.

Also nonsense. It's been tried over and over again without success.

> The only person in the entire U.S. government that I have ever heard about who was actually trying to determine if earthquakes could be predicted and who was also willing to talk with the general public about forecasting was Dr. Lionel Whiteside who used to post notes to this bulletin board.

You're forgetting me! I ran a program for 2 years which checked predictions from anyone who wanted to make them.

> And I expect that he finally stopped posting notes here because of all of the negative comments and arguments.

Not to mention the lack of evidence for his methods. Currently he won't let me even see them.

> If I remember correctly, his government job was eliminated in one of those periodic budget cuts.

Nothing unusual about that. Budget cuts just keep coming.

> Does that sound logical? With all of the earthquake dangers that face people living on the U.S. West Coast and perhaps in the St. Louis area, the U.S. government decided that it would be a good idea to get rid of perhaps the only government scientist who was willing to discuss earthquake forecasting with the general public?

More likely he simply retired.

> I suspect that the real reason that his job was eliminated was because his superiors at NOAA didn’t want their agency to have anything to do with earthquake forecasting.

I don't think his job was eliminated. He was in charge of the earthquake catalog at NOAA.

> Roger, with that type of comment you are in my opinion just telling people far and wide that you are a card carrying member or wannabe of that Special Interest Group that has been fighting so hard for so many years to keep the science of earthquake forecasting at a standstill!

Nope. I belong to the group to keep crackpots at a minimum.

> However, I also feel that with your posts here, though inaccurate, you are at least usually polite and considerate of the importance of the subject matter and the wishes of other people who are posting notes.

I do try to behave properly here but it's very hard sometimes.

Let me repeat, it's very important that the public not be endlessly disturbed by phony quake predictions. It destroys confidence in predictions in general and may lead to deaths and loss of property values.

Roger