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DustyMoment wrote: "20/20 hindsight and taking credit for something that happened - just not exactly the way this cat predicted it would.

I mean, if I predict that we will send probes to explore the planet Mercury, am I wrong when we send probes to explore the planet Mars? That's essentially what Sieh is claiming."

Not exactly.

From the article above, Professor Sieh

made a ten year study of the area,
made nearly accurate predictions on an impending devastating quake,
invested some of his money in publishing pamphlets and posters then distributed them as warning to the people in the area,
personally warned locals in the earthquake area, including one who is quoted in the article,
as part of his research he and his team cut into coral,
read and compared water depths, and finally
proved that the area had had predictable cycles of quakes about every two hundred years.

"The Caltech geology professor had studied the history of giant earthquakes just south of the epicenter for about a decade and knew full well the damage such a major quake in that part of the world could inflict..."

and

"...He had tried to get the word out that such an event was imminent. Now that hundreds of thousands have died, people are listening..."

and

"...By last summer, Sieh's concern that a major earthquake would hit off the coast of Sumatra had reached a level that prompted him to use some of his research funds to produce and distribute pamphlets and posters on the islands describing the threat along the subduction zone..."

and

"...No one knew exactly when or where the earthquake would strike. But Sieh knew the boundary was ripe for a major slip. As it turned out, he was focused on an area a bit too far south..."

and

"...Sieh and his team had determined by slicing into corals, and reading the natural record of water level they preserve, that giant earthquakes along the zone to the south recur about once every 200 years. The last major earthquake to hit offshore of central Sumatra occurred in 1833, was about magnitude 8.7 and produced large tsunamis..."

and

"...Even one of the friends he had made in the course of field work in Sumatra, Cristina Fowler, who runs a surf charter and hotel there, told the geologist when he returned after the new year, "You warned us. I didn't listen to you. I'm just lucky I didn't die.'

And she wanted another of his posters to put up in her hotel...."

and

"...Since 2002, Sieh and his colleagues have installed an array of GPS stations to track the sinking of the islands. Following their most recent trip to Sumatra in January, they now have 18 stations stretching to the northern tip of Aceh. They are watching the gradual healing process of the islands in the north and the behavior of the island to the south.

and

"...Now, Sieh is trying to inform villagers about what to do when they feel major shaking, urging them to clear paths to high ground and working with government officials and city planners to build adequate bridges and to consider relocating villages in safer locations..."

and

"...'I have no doubt that within the next century we'll have million-person losses,' caused by natural disasters in the developing world, Sieh said. "There will be hundreds of thousands more deaths in the next 10 to 15 years because of earthquakes alone...' "