Dong Choi, editor of the NCGT News has written the following editorial in the latest issue, No 54.
MORE EARTHQUAKES, MORE DEAD: WHY CAN’T WE PREDICT EARTHQUAKES?
In Australian TV station broadcasted a documentary program, “Why can’t we predict earthquakes?” on 2
February 2010. This one-hour program was originally made by the BBC in the UK. Many USGS
seismologists whom I knew only through publications and websites appeared on the screen. It was informative
and timely at the time of a worldwide rash of catastrophic earthquakes.The documentary started with the USGS earthquake prediction study in the late 1980s, which involved
measuring the movement and stress build-up along the San Andreas Fault in Park Field, California. It ended in
failure, as the expected earthquake did not happen in 1993, but instead in 2004, 11 years later. It was followed
by a fault mapping study in Sichuan Province, China, by a scientist from the British Geological Survey. All of
their studies are firmly embedded in plate collision theory – the North American and Pacific plates in
California, and the Indian and Eurasian plates in Sichuan. It also introduced animal (snake) behaviour
monitoring in China and electromagnetic experiments by NASA scientists, as a glimmer of hope for quake
prediction.Towards the end of the program, USGS seismologists and a University of Colorado professor concluded, “We
still don’t know exactly why earthquakes happen…. Earthquake prediction is impossible, and there is no
practical point to predict. When we make a prediction, people die on the freeway trying to get away….
Construct better buildings. But someone someday may find a holy grail of seismology.” Confusion and
pessimism dominate the mainstream seismological circles today.Needless to repeat here, but the biggest obstacle in developing earthquake prediction science is the reigning
tectonic model – plate tectonics. What we are seeing today is the end product of the era in which plate
tectonics had a monopoly in geological sciences. The collision or subduction of tectonic plates is not the cause
of tectonic activities in the shallow Earth. Therefore, fault mappings and stress measurements, although useful
and essential, do not lead to earthquake prediction. The real energy triggering the ground tremors and
magmatic activities is in the mantle. We, without recognition and external funding, have clarified the structures
of the mantle based on surface geology, seismic tomography and earthquake analysis, and have studied
precursors of destructive earthquakes. We have lately started to realize the important role of Earth’s outer core,
which discharges energy that causes geodynamic phenomena at the surface. As Tsunoda has well
demonstrated in the last and current NCGT issues, seismic thermal energy flows laterally along tectonic belts
after rising from the superplume in the South Pacific. His articles call for a fundamental change in thinking on
seismic and volcanic phenomena. Furthermore, there is a wide range of precursory signs in almost all major
quakes. We have to utilize all available information with an open mind and enhance the accuracy of prediction.Undoubtedly as long as mainstream seismologists cling to the plate model, there will be no viable earthquake
prediction.The continuing devastating earthquakes around the world in recent years are reflected in the high number of
earthquake papers and relevant comments and publications in this NCGT issue: a new tectonic interpretation
of the Samoa and Haiti quakes by Choi (p. 23-44), three energy flow routes and the VE process in Asia by
Tsunoda (p. 45-56), and planetary alignment in relation to earthquakes by Straser (57-64). These papers will
deepen the understanding of earthquake mechanisms and help establish a prediction science.
From the Plasma Model perspective, earthquakes are seen as the release of accumulating electric energy inside the Earth, though it should also be viewed in light of Gold’s deep hot biosphere model, in which the activity of a deep biosphere might also be linked to earth quake generation.
But Plate Tectonics, like AGW, is the result of Lyell’s legacy, in which verbal Virtuosity was used to establish geological facts in contradiction to recorded history. Remember that Lyell’s goal then, as is now with AGW, is the deployment of science for political goals. In such circumstances science always suffers. It has taken some 150 years to finally unshackle geology from Lyell’s political interference, for Plate Tectonics was never an empirically derived geological theory, but a geophysical one, and hopefully we might be able to reverse the pseudoscience that is Climate Science, even more quickly.
