How To Predict Earthquakes Infallibly (Hint: You Won't Find It Here)

Actually, I can reverse-predict earthquakes. I can state unequivocally that no more big earthquakes are going to happen in the near future. Here's how I can say this: I have a seismometer in the department at Modesto Junior College. It's on all the time, and it will usually pick up magnitude 6 quakes from anywhere in the world, and pretty much any magnitude 4 quake around California. So when reports started coming in from around the planet that we had experienced a couple of large earthquakes, I was anxious to see what the records looked like on our unit.

I got to school yesterday and found that there had been a power outage, and I got nothing. No records at all. So I turned the unit back on and that's why I know the big quakes will stop. Now that the seismometer is operating within parameters, nothing is sure to happen.

You all seem skeptical! You think this doesn't work? It doesn't seem scientific? Well, I guess you are right.

But it IS at least as scientific as the irresponsible scribes across the media who have suddenly spawned dozens if not hundreds of articles noting the clustering of earthquake events and suggesting that California must be next. The BIG ONE IS COMING, they say. These stories are uninformed, and they do a lot of damage of the "Boy Who Cried Wolf" nature.

People are perfectly willing to use click-bait titles to get attention (heck, even I did just now, but I'm not selling anything). And they spread a great deal of misinformation, leaving people vulnerable and unprepared for when the big earthquakes actually happen.

So here is my brief message about infallibly predicting earthquakes: it can't be done, and anyone on the web who says they can is deceiving you. The best we can do is invest in the study of the active faults in our region, and develop probabilities like those seen on the map below. Trust the seismologists and geologists, and learn to think critically about earthquakes. And when you see otherwise responsible news media getting the story wrong, do your part to inform the reporters and news readers.

Do you want to learn more? There are lots of reliable places to look. Start with the U.S. Geological Survey, the California Geological Survey, the Southern California Earthquake Center, and the UC Berkeley Seismological Laboratory.

http://www.conservation.ca.gov/CGS/rghm/psha/

A Look Back at Ten Years of Geotripping: Geotripper Emerges From the Apocalypse...

This week is my commemoration of ten years of geoblogging. I've been digging through the archives for some of my favorite posts of the last decade, and we've reached 2011. We had a series of epic trips that year, one with my students across the Pacific Northwest and northern Rocky Mountains, and the other a personal journey across the Basin and Range, the central Rocky Mountains and the Colorado Plateau. They resulted in not one, but two blog series, A Convergence of Wonders, and Vagabonding Across the 39th Parallel. I would recommend the first if you want to know what adventures await if you attend a Modesto Junior College geology field studies course, and the second if you want to know what happens when you just up and leave on a two-week trip without a plan, and just a vague goal (Rocky Mountain National Park). Those of you who know me will understand how hard that can be, starting out a day not completely certain where one will end up that night.

But as fun as those series were for me to write, I picked three individual posts from 2011 as my favorites. One was utilitarian, one was about the adventure of being a geologist (or geology fan), and the third, my response to yet another irresponsible prediction about a giant earthquake or apocalypse or some other world-ending thing that got the web and cable news all excited. Of course the predicted date came and went with no unusual activity as they always do. Frankly, I sort of lost it. That blogpost is below. The other two are coming shortly...enjoy!


From March 24, 2011: 

Welcome, survivors of the Apocalypse! Like you, I have been hiding in my underground bunker, safe from the radiation cloud and protected from the supermoon and giant earthquake that caused California to plunge into the sea. I'm waiting to see if my investment in oceanfront property on the Carrizo Plains has paid off with a nice seaside view. Did any of the southern California mountains remain as offshore islands? I was sort of hoping to have a few on the horizon. I've been rationing my Cheetos, Pringles and beef jerky. I lined my bunker with lots and lots of tin foil to protect myself from the electronic emanations of those pointy-headed "scientists" who kept poo-pooing the predictions of those who sensed the coming Apocalypse in their minds and mathematical calculations. As soon as I saw the work of the prophets on the Internet I knew it had to be true. Their prophecies were aired by the cable news networks, so I double-knew it had to be true. I didn't feel the earthquake because I built my shelter on a spring-loaded foundation. Was it really shaky? My clock broke, so I've been estimating the number of days I've been in hiding by making chalk marks on the wall; it's 2012 isn't it? The Mayan calendar came to an end and all? Have the Zombies died out yet?

Well, that's that. The supermoon weekend passed and California is still here. The full moon didn't scrape along the ground and erase cities. There were no tidal disruptions. There was no earthquake. There were no volcanic eruptions. No one melted from the radiation cloud. The prophets and predictors were wrong, yet again, wrong again for the umpteenth time. Over and over they are wrong. Hundreds of times they have been wrong. And still they find a stage on the cable news networks, the Internet, the radio...over and over. There always seems to be a crowd of uninformed and misinformed people who take them seriously, and there are uninformed and misinformed news readers who are unable to critically assess their irresponsible claims. At the same time they dismiss the statements and findings of academics who have given over their lives to the study and understanding of the earth sciences. And in the end the charlatans and fakes are never brought to account for scaring people and causing economic disruptions.

I've seen enough of "judgment journalism" in politics to know that cable news outlets are capable of shaming those who cross the line of honesty and decency. They are capable of using their media platform to upbraid and criticize officials who steal money or engage in hypocritical behaviour. Why are they not criticizing and shaming those who carelessly predicted earthquakes and radiation poisoning without regard to the consequences of being totally (and predictably) wrong? I have never seen the news readers take a self-proclaimed "psychic" to task for their hundreds of wrong predictions.

Wouldn't it be nice just once to see a camera crew waiting outside the home of one of those self-proclaimed psychics or would-be earthquake prophets and ask them over and over why they made yet another wrong claim that needlessly scared people? Just once to hear them told to their face that they are charlatans and fakes? How long will the con artists persist when they know they will be subjected to public derision when they make their spurious claims?

In the meantime, the media outlets need to learn the real facts about the possibilities of quakes and other hazards in California (and anywhere else) and make sure their audiences know the actual magnitude of the threat. The faults are here after all, and there is a lot of built-up stress. Damaging quakes will happen, and we need to all be as prepared as possible. The first thing to do is to arm yourself with knowledge. Get this knowledge from responsible government agencies like the U.S. Geological Survey, or the California Geological Survey, or academic organizations like the Southern California Earthquake Center. Then you make the appropriate preparations: keep emergency supplies of water, flashlights, radios, batteries, and first aid kits, both in your home, and in your car. Have a family plan for what to do when disaster strikes.

By the way, it is ok to have Pringles and Cheetos in your emergency supplies...but put some healthy stuff in there too. There is junk food and there is junk news. Too much of either can be harmful to your health.

Pseudoscience, Scientific Illiteracy and the Greatest Human Journey. What to do?

How many people do you know? How many of them are scientists?

Wait a minute...how did THAT happen??

Many people do not know scientific researchers in their everyday lives, and that is a situation that seriously needs to change. There is a massive amount of misinformation floating about the Internet, and an unfortunate misunderstanding about the way that science works. People are just not being given the tools to critically distinguish between scientific facts and pseudo-scientific garbage. The actions of the new administration suggest that government-sponsored scientific data and research will be improperly manipulated or simply censored in support of political ideology (I salute those heroes of science who labor at places like the Environment Protection Agency, U.S. Geological Survey, NOAA, and other government science-based departments. They are not the ones who are misrepresenting science. One has to look higher in the bureaucracy for the miscreants).

So what can be done?

As always, education is the key. Callan Bentley at Mountain Beltway got me started on this entire reflection with a short blast I saw on his social media. In his words:

I want to serve society in combating science illiteracy, and I think one way I can do that is to solicit questions or topics from those who want to learn more, and use those as a springboard for discussion. It’s time for me to let my social media network including you, dear reader, drive the content of the blog. I’ve set up a simple Google Form to allow anyone to submit questions anonymously.

This is a GREAT idea, and I am shamelessly going to do somewhat the same thing. Although I've always answered questions through the blog comments, I am adding a sidebar to make queries an official thing (it's not so cool as Callan's Google form, but an email question will work). If there are geological things you've always wanted to know more about, this is one place to look.

What else can be done?

One can get to know the people who do scientific research. Check out #actuallivingscientist on Twitter. Many of the people posting there are offering to answer questions about their work. It's a great way to get some perspective on the richness of the human journey.

Because that is what science is: the greatest human adventure. Sports figures come and go. Actors and celebrities get married and do stupid things in public. Politicians collect their accolades and sometimes their bribes. But that all passes. What doesn't pass is our knowledge of the cosmos and our continuing adventure into realms of the unknown.

The cosmos as seen from Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawai'i

Searching for the Lemurians and Atlanteans on Mt. Shasta (and finding a volcano instead)

Did you know that there are like thousands of beings living in Mt. Shasta? Did you know they are the remnants of the Lemurian and Atlantean societies that survived the dunking of their gigantic continent in the Mediterranean, or the Atlantic, or the Pacific, somewhere out there? And that they have ESP and special sense organs, and that they dig tunnels using vibrating bells or gems or something like that?

Well, if you can believe hard enough, you will no doubt sense their presence on an astral plane or some such, and if you imagine hard enough, you'll see the giant pyramid that encloses the mountain and extends into space where you can meet like the Confederation of Planets, and down into the core of the Earth, where you can do something or another. If you believe hard enough.

Science is hard and boring. Why in the world would I want to work so hard to understand subduction zone tectonics, magma formation, and the geological history of a volcanic mountain when it is so hard to keep it straight? How much easier it is to just choose to believe something outlandish and entertaining! Believing makes things real.

Oh, until the volcano erupts. Then science gets real...

It's not surprising that mythology surrounds Mount Shasta. The volcano truly does command attention. At something over 14,000 feet in elevation, mantled in glaciers, and covered by vast amounts of snow in winter, it is a huge mountain that can be seen from points all over Northern California. It's the largest stratovolcano in the Cascades, and maybe even in the world.

It best imagined as a composite cone, being composed of at least four distinct cones that erupted in the last 300,000 years. The older cones have been destroyed by erosion or explosion, but the volcano reawakens after a time and produces new pyroclastic ash layers and lava flows to produce a new cones. The oldest is the Sargents Ridge Cone, followed by the Misery Hill Cone. These were followed by two very recent cones, Shastina and the Hotlum Cone, both of which formed within the last 10,000 years. The volcano is the second most active in the Cascades, behind only Mt. St. Helens. Eruptions occur every 600 years or so, with the most recent in 1786.

Mythology is a very human construct. We seek the comfort that comes from understanding the unknown, and we seek meaning in our existence. Mythology has always provided us a story, a narrative by which we can better understand our lives. Science is in a sense human mythology as well, since it performs many of the same functions as ancient mythology. It provides explanations for the apparently unexplainable, like earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, and allows us to understand the relationship of those phenomena with our lives. But there is a huge and important difference: the stories we tell in science  and geology are based on observation and experimentation, and we always understand that our conclusions are subject to change based on the introduction of new evidence.

The value of science and geology as it applies to Mt. Shasta is that it gives us a tool for predicting the future. When we can fully understand how a volcano works and understand how it has worked in the past, we can better prepare for the future. We understand exactly what the volcano is capable of doing, and what the thousands of people who live in its shadow will need to do to survive a future eruption. And we have the monitoring equipment to catch the rise of magma beneath the volcano that would herald a new eruption (unless, of course, the equipment sits abandoned because of a government shutdown caused by politicians who don't think health care should be offered to all Americans).

So, our field studies last week including a drive up to the 8,000 foot level of Mt. Shasta, and a review of the fascinating history of the mountain. I almost forgot to even mention Lemurians and that staggering amount of..."stuff"...attributed to spirits and pixies and fairies on and in the mountain. I simply reviewed the boring science of the incredible mountain, including the story of how a collapse of one of the earliest versions of Shasta formed a debris avalanche that traveled 28 miles before it came to rest. And then we headed down the road to Lava Beds National Monument, where we explored the lava tubes and I came face to face with what can only have been a Lemurian....