Demonstration Bulletin Board and Note To Skywise – December 21, 2012

The following is an indirect URL for an earthquake forecasting and earthquake research bulletin board that is now finally getting developed.

http://www.freewebs.com/eq-forecasting/bbs.html

At the moment there are just some html files stored there. The actual bulletin board CGI program is being developed on my PC using the Xampp CGI simulator program.

The basic CGI program that is being modified is the 1996 freeware Matt Wright Perl Language WWWBoard program that is also the basic CGI program that runs the EarthWaves board. I like the simplicity and format of the html Web pages that it creates. And I am also using that program because I know how to work with Perl language programming to some degree.

The invitation to Skywise and others is that if they want to see some experimental work done with the format of this type of bulletin board then they can post a response note here about that or contact me by E-mail. It is my plan to make the modified CGI code available to appropriate parties for free use. Obviously I can’t provide anyone with the security codes for my Web sites. But it should be possible to share most of the modified WWWBoard CGI code without problems.

THE REASON THAT A NEW BULLETIN BOARD IS BEING CREATED

After many years of circulating earthquake forecasting information, one of the main things that I have learned is that for the foreseeable future, people in the geology community are not going to be able to get along with people, even other geologists, who are attempting to forecast earthquakes. Additionally, even the people who are trying to forecast earthquakes often seem to be unable to get along with one another.

With the earthquake forecasters it can be a “My approach works better than your. So, you are not allowed to try to forecast them yourself.”

And there are other problems that can be so strange they defy any form of logic.

The geologists – forecasters problem appears to me to largely take the following form:

When someone states that earthquakes can be predicted using this or that approach, people see that information and ask their favorite geology specialist, “Does that approach actually work? The forecasts that this person is generating look pretty good.”

If that were all that was said there would probably be no problems. But it doesn’t stop at that. The people might then ask,

“If that person can predict earthquakes then why can’t you predict them? And why aren’t you even attempting to do that?”

The geology specialists might then decide that their jobs are at risk. So they insist that “Earthquakes can’t be predicted !!!” And this intense animosity develops towards the forecasters who are attempting to predict the earthquakes in the first place.

If on the other hand the forecasters published endless number of technical papers explaining in detail how their methods work and provided unlimited amounts of information supporting their methods then perhaps the geology specialists might be happy. But that approach takes too long. The earthquakes aren’t going to wait until 99% of the geologists around the world are in total agreement with one another that some forecasting approach works. As a consequence some of the geology specialists become human speed bumps and constantly attempt to block progress.

The only way to deal with that “human speed bump” problem and make some progress in a reasonable amount of time is to create some communications resources that might enable forecasters around the world to share information with one another and the general public without constant interference by those geology specialists.

The earlier version of the EarthWaves board known as QuakeNet was created by another researcher (and myself to a limited degree) largely for that purpose. And it eventually evolved into this present EarthWaves board and the moderated Yahoo EarthWaves board.

The Yahoo board does not have the right structure for rapid communications. This EarthWaves.org board does.

Canie did a moderately good job over the years with keeping this board from getting too far out of control. But there were always endless arguments that held back progress with the science of forecasting earthquakes.

So, that new bulletin board is being developed so that the forecasters can share information without the geology specialists etc. constantly insisting that “Earthquakes can’t be predicted” and slowing things down.

The major problems with the new bulletin board are the facts that I have only limited amounts of time to work on the CGI program development and board post monitoring. And I am also not really that expert with Perl programming. I might have to contact some other people who are in order to see if features can be added that will let people store picture files with their posts etc.

Anyway, this effort is finally formally getting underway. And with some humor intended I will propose that I waited until today to get it started to cover the possibility that the world might come to an end as some people have apparently been expecting.

Why waste time trying to forecast earthquakes when the world is going to end anyway?

It doesn’t look to me like it ended. So, time to get started with this.

These are personal opinions.

• Demonstration Bulletin Board