How You Too Can Become A Big-Shot Quake Predictor

I have noted with bemusement (as well as with derision) over the years the claims and "attitudinalness" of the pseudo-scientific earthquake prediction crowd. I note that in most cases they know a little bit about geology and seismology but there's their problem: a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. Were they to more thoroughly study geology and geophysics they would not be who and what they are and not be doing what they do.... which they don't do very well. I also note that they hold professional scientists in low regard insisting that the professionals don't know what they are doing. Furthermore, they insist that "establishment" scientists either suppress the truth as part of some conspiracy to keep the masses in the dark and/or steal the ideas of the "quake predictors" and take credit for them.

Some even go so far as to suggest that scientists don't wish to predict quakes because if they're wrong they will lose their jobs and hence their silence is merely job-security-driven. This, of course, ignores the fact that scientists do predict, or rather forecast, earthquakes with all the necessary caveats. Most such forecasts stretch across decadal time periods. However, occasionally a forecast will go out for a given region set within a smaller timeframe such as anywhere between one year or several. We don't hear much about more tightly time-constrained forecasts because they are nearly always research-related and not yet reliable enough to be regarded as public-safety bulletins. In other words, scientists don't refrain from quake forecasting to save their jobs but simply usually lack the scientific foundation for making scary-sounding forecasts of impending regional seismological catastrophe. Were science able to reliably forecast that a M7.4 earthquake was about to strike the Elsinore Fault Zone within a month or a year then you would no doubt here about it and public safety and emergency management personnel and agencies would be hard at work making ready for it.

One fact that favors the psuedo-scientific earthquake "predictors" is the sheer number of earthquake predictors in action as well as the sheer number of predictions they make in the aggregate. Invariably, any earthquake of note that occurs now can be claimed by one or more of these charlatans to have been successfully predicted by them. This, of course, is folly and follows the principle that a broken clock gives correct time twice a day.

Below is a list of useful tips that you will find useful if you too decide to get into the fun and accountability-free hobby of predicting earthquakes. You might not need all of these tips but no doubt some of them will be useful in your particular circumstance.

1. Be extremely dogmatic and haughtily certain about your own claims. Hey, you know what you're doing... you listened to Jim Berkland on Coast-to-Coast AM... while living with your mother.
2. Be disdainful and condescending in regards to the scientific establishment. Heck, what do they know?
3. Claim that your research was rejected by peer review panels because the panel members weren't sophisticated enough to grasp your "outside the box" ideas.
4. Claim that "establishment" scientists often steal ideas from hard-working quake predictors like you and then take credit for them... those rascals! 
5. Make predictions as often as necessary to increase your odds of a coincidence of an actual notable earthquake falling within the parameters of one of your prophetic predictions. Remember: a broken clock gives correct time twice a day!
6. Make predictions as flexible in parameters and vague in specifics as possible. Think and talk like Nostradamus.
7. Your own blog as well as Youtube and Twitter and other social media channels are your friends. Use Powerpoint presentations and other graphic tools with cool sounding music and impressive-sounding jargon. Finding fools this way will be like shooting fish in a barrel.
8. You can always back-date blog posts so it appears you said things before a given earthquake that you actually said after said earthquake. Conversely, ALWAYS clean up after yourself and expunge all electronic evidence of past failures. 
9. Get yourself a college degree that is at best obliquely-related to the research of quake forecasting. Think electrical engineering or urban planning. By all means avoid geophyics or seismology because those people will be ruthless. Now you will be able to boast that you are a scientist predicting quakes.
10. Get yourself published... well, self-published. By adding that you are a published author, and not necessarily about earthquake predicting... could be a book about UFO's, doesn't matter, you're a published earthquake-predicting author. This might even get you on Coast-To-Coast AM!

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