Confusing Patterns With Coincidences (Earthquakes)

NY Times ^ | April 11, 2009 | SUSAN HOUGH

[neverdem]

IN the aftermath of the earthquake at L’Aquila, Italy, on Monday that killed nearly 300 people, splashy headlines suggested that these victims didn’t have to die.

An Italian researcher, Giampaolo Giuliani, began to sound alarm bells a month earlier, warning that an earthquake would strike near L’Aquila on March 29. The prediction was apparently based on anomalous radon gas concentrations in the air; the region had also experienced a number of small tremors starting in mid-January. Mr. Giuliani was denounced for inciting panic by Italy’s Civil Protection Agency, and he was forced to take his warning off the Web after March 29 came and went without significant activity.

Should Italian officials have listened? Should the public have heeded the warnings? With 20-20 hindsight the answer certainly appears to be yes. The real answer is no.

Scientists have been chasing earthquake prediction — the holy grail of earthquake science — for decades. In the 1970s American seismologists declared that the goal was reachable. Yet we have little to no real progress to show for our efforts. We have a good understanding of the planet’s active earthquake zones. We’re pretty good at forecasting the long-term rates of earthquakes in different areas. But prediction per se, which involves specifying usefully narrow windows in time, location and magnitude, has eluded us.

The key question is, can we find precursors that tell us that a large earthquake is imminent? Various phenomena have been investigated: radon levels, changes in earthquake wave speeds, the warping of the earth’s crust, even the behavior of cockroaches and other animals.

The game goes like this: you look back at past recordings of X, where X is radon or whatever, and find that X had shown anomalies before large earthquakes. But the problem is that X is typically what we...

[neverdem]

Susan Hough is a geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey.

[tubebender]

EQ discussion ping...

[muawiyah]

Well, whatever she is it should be my right to make up my own mind about whether or not a "warning" is legitimate, not hers.

Fur Shur I always stop at railroad tracks ~ having been smacked once there's not going to be a second time. The crossbars tell me it's a railroad ~ I proceed with caution after a full stop even if it's pretty clear to everybody else there's no train around.

When visiting California if a building suddenly emits a "crack" I don't go in for many minutes lest that be the start of an earthquake ~ so far I've been correct because I've not had a building fall on me.

When I see tornadic winds I don't wait for the siren to tell me to take cover.

We could go on and on with this.

The scientist said an earthquake was ready to pop. The politicians shut him down. The earthquake came. Now here's a political "scientist" in the Obama Regime telling us to wait for their warning, not your own, and certainly not that of a crazy guy in a white coat with a radon detector to do so, because, alas he's only going to be correct 5% of the time.

When it's my life someone is playing with, 5% is a pretty big risk. If we had a 5% risk of having a fatal accident on the highway we'd not drive our cars there. If we had a 5% risk of drowning at the beach, we'd not sunbathe.

I think this is part of the Leftwingtard problem when it comes to real risks that can kill us. They think we should take those 5% chances and just die and get out of the way!

[DannyTN]

Give the people the information and let them decide. If predictions on radon gas are wrong 95% of the time, that’s still a 1 in 20 chance that they are correct. So I would want to know about the prediction and the odds.

And yes, I realize that the article probably just threw out 95% wrong as an example. but whatever the real number is tell us.

[EggsAckley]

On the day of the ‘89 Loma Prieta quake, a close friend called me just before five PM. She was very agitated and kept saying something was wrong, but she couldn't say what it was, just that she felt “something bad.” Six minutes after she hung up we were hit with a 7.2 quake. She knew it was coming.

The weird part was that the minute I hung up, my gardener called, very angry because my line had been busy. He needed to come up and get his empty garbage cans and said “I'll be right up.” I went outside to move the cans out of the garage and when I came back inside, the quake hit, ferociously, since I live a half mile from the epicenter.

When I spoke to the gardener a few days later he was so glad that my line had been busy, because if it hadn't been, he wouldn't have been at home for the event. He literally had to carry his three kids out of his house...they just couldn't walk with all the shaking.

Arrgghh. Hard memory to dredge up.

[Kirkwood]

“The weird part was that the minute I hung up, my gardener called, very angry because my line had been busy.”

If he were my gardener, he would be looking for work. I hope you fired him.

[Raycpa]

This logic is not allowed for global climate science.

[EggsAckley]

Did that, not too long after.

~</;o)

[Polynikes]

check out “When the Snakes Awake: Animals and Earthquake Prediction” It can be had at Amazon or better yet check it out at the library. A very fascinating read on precursor activity.

[Polynikes]

My day on the Loma Prieta quake I left work early as nothing was going on. There was no one on Hwy 880 due to the the World Series so the drive was really quick. I drove the double decker section 10-12 minutes before it collapsed and saw the cars all stacked up trying to get on Hwy 80. The toll plaza was virtually deserted and the Bay was smooth as glass. I made it across the Bay Bridge and down onto surface streets before the waves hit. I remember seeing seismic waves coming down Masonic Ave. and lifting my truck into the air and dropping me back down.

[neverdem]

Now here's a political "scientist" in the Obama Regime telling us to wait for their warning, not your own, and certainly not that of a crazy guy in a white coat with a radon detector to do so, because, alas he's only going to be correct 5% of the time.

"Susan Hough is a geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey."

http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/office/hough/

IMHO, she's just a government scientist giving her opinion that predicting earthquakes is too hard to call with any accuracy for the amount of time involved. Time is money.

[capt. norm]

The game goes like this: you look back at past recordings of X, where X is radon or whatever, and find that X had shown anomalies before large earthquakes. But the problem is that X is typically what we...

Had they done the same thing in the man-made global warming research, they would have noticed that increased CO₂ followed warm periods and was actually a result and not a cause.

[exDemMom]

The problem with that, is that there really is no way to tell what it means. So 5% of the time before there’s an earthquake, radon levels increase. And 95% of the time radon levels increase, there is no quake? Furthermore, 95% of quakes are not accompanied with an increase in the level of radon? If radon levels increase, and that kind of information is publicized, what are people supposed to make of it?

Until there is some way of establishing a causal association between a pre-earthquake event, and an earthquake, prediction just is not possible. Weather prediction is an exact science, next to the difficulty of trying to predict earthquakes. Look at the attitudes people have towards weather forecasts.

[exDemMom]

When I was in graduate school, I went to turn on the water and had a very odd sensation when I touched the faucet. It was almost like an electric shock. I thought "Hmm, I wonder if we're about to have an earthquake?"

An hour later, we had an earthquake.

It's too bad there are no sensors or something to pick up unusual feelings before earthquakes occur. If there's something that animals and people (like your friend) pick up on, there must be a physical phenomenon going on. Measuring and quantifying it may be a challenge.

[neverdem]

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[SunkenCiv]

Thanks neverdem.

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[GOPJ]

Thanks for the ping.