Italy Prosecutes Seismologists

Predicting exactly when an earthquake will happen is impossible.  One can predict the probability of an earthquake happening, but not an exact hour.  There seems to be accumulating various clues as to preconditions for earthquakes that may help predict them.  Right now, Italy has arrested some geologists because they couldn’t accurately predict a recent earthquake.  This has many seismologists very angry and scared.  I think it is insanity.

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First, the news that there has been some interesting atmospheric effects before a major earthquake which could clue us in for the possibility of other quakes happening in the future:  Atmosphere Above Japan Heated Rapidly Before M9 Earthquake  – Technology Review

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Last year, we looked at some fascinating data from the DEMETER spacecraft showing a significant increase in ultra-low frequency radio signals before the magnitude 7 Haiti earthquake in January 2010…

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They say that before the M9 earthquake, the total electron content of the ionosphere increased dramatically over the epicentre, reaching a maximum three days before the quake struck.

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…The thinking is that in the days before an earthquake, the great stresses in a fault as it is about to give cause the releases large amounts of radon.  The radioactivity from this gas ionises the air on a large scale and this has a number of knock on effects. Since water molecules are attracted to ions in the air, ionisation triggers the large scale condensation of water.

 

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I believe this is a good tool, Demeter monitors the earth and gives us information about changes in all sorts of natural effects.  NASA – NSSDC – Spacecraft – Details.  It was funded by the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (France) and launched by the Russians in Kazakhstan.

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Demeter (Detection of ElectroMagnetic Emissions Transmitted from Earthquake Regions) is a French minisatellite (125 kg) that monitors the Electromagnetic activity in the ionosphere during and after earthquakes. It was launched by a Dnieper booster at 07:45 UT on 29 June 2004. It carries probes for electric fields (0-3 MHz) (ICE) and magnetic fields (10 Hz-18 kHz) (IMSC), a plasma analyzer (IAP), a Langmuir probe (ISL), and a particle detector (IDP).

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The IAP (Instrument Analyseur Plasma) experiment consists of two analyzers: APR (Analyseur à Potentiel Retardateur, Retarding Potential Analyzer) performs the energy analysis of ram direction ions and ADV (Analyseur pour Direction de Vitesse, Velocity Direction Analyzer) determines the average angles of arrival of the ions. APR measurements allow to determine the density, temperature and bulk energy of the ionospheric ions. IAP has 2 Survey modes of operation a medium energy resolution mode for APR providing a complete set of plasma parameters every ~ 360 ms and a high energy resolution mode with a lower temporal resolution providing a complete set of measurements every 720 ms. Density fluctuations from ADV measurements are available with a time resolution of 12.8 ms. There is also one Burst mode of operation featuring high energy and high temporal resolution with a complete set of plasma parameters every ~ 360 ms. Density fluctuations are available with a time resolution of 6.4 ms. The objective of the IAP experiment is to characterize the state of the ionospheric plasma, in order to detect perturbations that may be associated with seismic activity and to provide the plasma parameters that are needed to analyze the data from the plasma wave instruments, ICE and IMSC. As a secondary objective, near real time ionospheric data can be provided for space weather purposes.

 

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Many years ago, I noted that the most important celestial body we could study from space probes is our own planet and the other vital star to watch is our own sun.  The many probes looking at the earth have expanded our horizons of understanding to an astonishing degree.  People forget that the concept of plate tectonic movement coincides with landing men on the moon.  This isn’t accidental, just as whole earth understanding of the weather began at this same time, distance from the earth gave us some perspective.

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We still mostly guess as to what is going on right below the surface of the earth.  There is plenty more to explore and try to understand just as we barely understand why the earth suddenly began the present Ice Age/Interglacial cycles.  There is so much room for error, predicting anything is extremely tricky.  Just as we should not forget that we are at the end of an interglacial period and we haven’t much more than the foggiest notion as to why previous interglacials suddenly (perhaps in the matter of months!) ended so spectacularly.

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Back to today, in Italy government officials decided that Italian Seismologists should be Charged With Manslaughter for Not Predicting 2009 Quake.  This sounds like ancient China where court astrologers were put to death if they failed to predict lunar or solar eclipses or earthquakes.

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A shocked spokesman for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) likened the accusations to a witch hunt.

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The seven scientists were placed under investigation almost a year ago, according to a news story on the website of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) — the world’s largest general-science society and a leading voice for the interests of scientists worldwide.

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Alan Leschner, chief executive of AAAS, said his group wrote a letter to the Italian government last year — clearly, to no avail….Judge Giuseppe Romano Gargarella said that the seven defendants had supplied “imprecise, incomplete and contradictory information,” in a press conference following a meeting held by the committee 6 days before the quake, reported the Italian daily Corriere della Sera

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In doing so, they “thwarted the activities designed to protect the public,” the judge said.

 

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This is totally insane.  Especially coming from the Italian government which runs trains in such a fashion, there was little connection between official schedules and actual train arrivals (something that afflicts the US train system, too!).  No one can predict the exact hour an earthquake will happen!  On the other hand, going about a city and looking at buildings, one can tell pretty easily which ones are hazardous in an earthquake.

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My favorite horrible example of this is the MacArthur Maze – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  This double decker highway in the Bay Area terrified me the one and only time I drove a truck on the lower level.  I swore I would never do this ever again because I knew it was a death trap:

 

During the October 17, 1989, Loma Prieta earthquake, which measured 7.1 Mw, the double-decked Cypress Street Viaduct on I-880 between I-80 and the 14th Street exit collapsed, crushing cars and killing 42 people. Traffic on the MacArthur Maze headed towards I-880 was re-routed to I-580 and I-980, and ramps at both ends of the viaduct leading to the former Cypress Structure were signed for local traffic access to Cypress Street.

 

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Italy is like the US West Coast: it has earthquakes and volcanoes galore due to Africa squeezing the Mediterranean Sea.  Some of the most destructive volcanic events happened in the Mediterranean region in the last 5,000 years!  Italy knows full well it is a dangerous, unstable landscape.  Yet, Naples grew into a vast extended city right in the shadow of Mt. Vesuvius and the government has no way of evacuating the area safely if there is another major eruption.

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Geologists know there will be another major eruption. They can’t tell when but they can make educated guesses.  The problem is, people want to live there and thus, they must take the risks that this is a big mistake.  Just as one can predict potential tornado weather, one cannot predict the exact path any particular tornado will take anymore than one can predict what degree a volcano will erupt or an earthquake will shake.

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The difference between probability and actuality is hard for laymen to understand.  Even when predicting probabilities, new data can shift the parameters very suddenly into new predictions of future probabilities.  Just as Japan planned for tsunamis but didn’t take into account the business of subsidence of continental coastal areas even after this happened so obviously in Indonesia, there are many parameters that have to be understood when planning to survive natural catastrophes.

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The government of Italy has been tremendously lax about building codes designed to protect people from earthquakes.  Japan can be forgiven for not understanding subsidence effects but Italy has thousands of years of earthquake experience yet continues to allow buildings to exist that are hazardous, anyways.

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On top of this, quacks who use magic numbers to predict events abound and people actually listen to them:  Roman seismologist prediction of major earthquake in Italy fails

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Raffaele Bendandi, a self-taught seismologist who died in 1976, predicted a devastating earthquake to hit Rome on May 11, 2011. Although nothing disastrous occurred, 22 minor temblors hit the quake-prone nation of Italy….thousands left Rome as a precaution. In one neighborhood near the city’s central train station, many storefronts were closed off and those who feared disaster escaped to the nation’s countryside, reports the Canadian Press.

 

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May 11, 2011 is a magic number day so naturally, this guy would decide this also is a good day to have a catastrophe.  It is not uncommon to marry predictions of End of Times with various magical numbers.  We recently saw a number of crazy Christians who wanted the world to end, putting themselves into financial ruin because of ridiculous predictions.  Well, in Italy, there has been this earthquake mania, too.

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Not just Italy, either!  Some smart aleck in Taiwan did the exact same thing with the same magic number day, too!  May 11th earthquake forecast may be subject to NT$ 1 mln fine: Central Weather Bureau｜ChinaTimes.com

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A Taiwanese blogger is facing fines of up to NT$1 million (US$34,6114) for issuing a disastrous weather forecast without authorization and thereby violating the Meteorological Act, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) has said.  The announcement came after a self-titled “Teacher Wang,” calling himself a feng shui master, published an article on his blog on the udn.com platform. The article forecast a catastrophic, destructive earthquake and said that a “doomsday” earthquake measuring 14 on the Richter scale would hit Taiwan on May 11….Returning to the current-day prediction by Wang, the article also said that on May 17, a 170-meter-high tsunami triggered by the quake would hit Taiwan as well. This prompted some believers of Wang’s prediction to purchase large numbers of container shelters in Puli in central Taiwan in preparation for the May 11 catastrophe, according to local media reports.

 

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This nonsense spooked many people, too.  I see this online all the time.   People are amazingly credulous when it comes to this sort of information.  People who think they are smart are really easy prey for manipulative or delusive people who appeal to some very primitive parts of our brains.  But then, all religions do this, too.  We have a core thinking process in our brains that makes us very vulnerable to magic number beliefs, for example.

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End of Times fears are quite destructive and people really do act on these beliefs and it can strike any country and this can lead to hysteria, mania and loss of life due to panic.  Of course, there are real dangers out there like the possibility of WWIII suddenly erupting with a nuclear bomb roar.  Or an asteroid hitting.  There are all sorts of nasty surprises.  But can we predict these?

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No, but we can discuss probability.  California-Nevada Fault Maps:  California and Nevada have been shaking like a leaf for the last year but not the key parts of the San Andreas right in the middle and this will definitely have a major, major quake sometime in the not too distant future.  It is inevitable, it will happen.  The exact hour is totally unknown.  I do hope the DEMETER probe can give us a clue.  It may save some lives.

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