Keep on dreaming regarding good things that might happen.

I know who those people are and largely what they are doing.

I believe that their forecasting approach is both sound and worth developing. And they have my full encouragement to move forward as quickly as possible.

However, their program has several major flaws or limitation in my opinion.

If I understand their history correctly, their parent company originally hoped to develop earthquake forecasting technology that they could use to make a profit. However, at some point they determined that the technology might take a long time to get running. And so they decided to make convert it into a humanitarian type of effort.

That is largely what I did myself quite a few years ago.

Regarding their program limitations,

1. The types of sensors they are employing need to be fairly close to the fault zone. And that means that very large portions of the planet including probably the oceans are presently outside the range of their sensors. And that will continue to be the case for a long, long time. So, most of the planet will not be protected by their technology in any reasonable amount of time, if ever.

2. It appears to me that they don’t have a very good idea regarding how complex the processes can be that cause the EM Signals to be generated in the first place. My data indicate to me that every fault zone and earthquake is different. And in some cases there are very dramatic differences between earthquakes. As a consequence, detectable and reliable EM Signals will be generated before some earthquakes and not others.

3. The people running that program don’t appear to me to have an especially good sense of direction. They are missing a lot of outstanding opportunities to move faster and get more done.

3A. For one example, as far as I am aware they have not established any direct lines of communications with researchers in the People’s Republic of China. And researchers in China have accumulated tremendous amounts of data regarding the detection of electromagnetic signals.

3B. For a second example, they don’t appear to me to grasp the importance of creating an international data clearinghouse where people could send their forecasting data and have it evaluated and circulated. This is frequently a problem with commercial groups. They prefer to work independently.

Something that I have said repeatedly to earthquake researchers over the years is that effective communications with other researchers is critically important to the success of any program. History had repeatedly shown that when earthquake forecasters decide to go it on their own they are almost certainly doomed to failure. However, that lesson from history continues to be lost on researchers around the world whose visions can be clouded by dreams of wealth and glory.

Once again, my two personal messages to that forecasting group would be:

1. Learn how to communicate better with other researchers.

2. Work Faster !!!

These are personal opinions.