Governments are making a major mistake in not developing procedures for warning people about approaching earthquakes right now. How to do that is a dreaded “unknown” that is seriously affecting international earthquake forecasting efforts.

Government officials and forecasters are so afraid of what could happen to them if they were to cause a panic that it is suppressing forecasting research. In many cases people would rather simply let the earthquake occur and claim countless lives. Then they can just call it an “Act of God.”

The government officials and scientists can’t be blamed for an “Act of God.” But, they could be and would be blamed it they forecast an earthquake for the wrong location or time and got everyone upset.

Finally, my own forecasts basically just tell people that “Now is the time to start looking at your own forecast data because a significant earthquake is about to occur.” And my charts provide some possible location data for the expected earthquake.

I did circulate those types of warnings shortly before that devastating 2010 Haiti earthquake (warning date January 11, 2010) and the highly destructive one in Japan last March (warning date March 7, 2011). You can see them in the EarthWaves archives.

Earthquakes don’t occur where I live. And it isn’t my fault if other forecasters are not able to evaluate their own data and tell that an earthquake is about to occur where they live after I warn them that a significant one is on the way for somewhere on the planet.

These are personal opinions.