“Major earthquakes can be predicted months in advance, argues UCLA seismologist and mathematical geophysicist Vladimir Keilis-Borok.
“Keilis-Borok, 82, has been working on earthquake prediction for more than 20 years.”
(FuturePundit, 11th January 2004, http://www.futurepundit.com/…)
L'Aquila, Italy after Monday's earthquake
Yet the head of Italy’s National Geophysics Institute dismisses the possibility of earthquake predictions:
“Every time there is an earthquake there are people who claim to have predicted it,” he said. “As far as I know nobody predicted this earthquake with precision. It is not possible to predict earthquakes.”
(Reuters, 6th April 2009, http://www.alertnet.org/…)
“An Italian scientist predicted a major earthquake around L’Aquila weeks before disaster struck the city on Monday, killing dozens of people.
“Italy’s Civil Protection agency held a meeting of the Major Risks Committee [MRC], grouping scientists charged with assessing such risks, in L’Aquila on March 31 to reassure the townspeople.
“Giuliani, who based his forecast on concentrations of radon gas around seismically active areas, was reported to police for “spreading alarm” and was forced to remove his findings from the Internet.”
(Metro, 6th April 2009, http://www.metro.co.uk/…)
“Italians will begin the grim task of laying to rest nearly 300 victims of a devastating earthquake in a Good Friday state funeral.”
(CNN, 10th April 2009, http://edition.cnn.com/…)
The head of the MRC said, “every time there is an earthquake there are people who claim to have predicted it” (Reuters). He infers there are many people like Giluliani then. Perhaps there were many other (qualified scientists) like Giluliani (who made such claims then)? Well, it appears not: there has been no mention of other qualified scientists’ claims.It seems that Giuliani is somewhat alone in his position.
On a moral level, it seems that if there was any chance that Giuliani could have been right, the authorities should have deeply investigated it - to rule out doubt, at least. Moreover, the fact that the authorities actually instigated self-censorship by Giuliani is morally terrible. They should have been collaborating with him, not censoring him.
On a political level one can see why the MRC may want to picture Guiluliani as small, attention-seeking, and an outsider: to minimise the possibility of the main-stream world media saying, ‘could the government have done anything to stop this earthquake’s tragic consequences?’, i.e. a “cover your ass” politic.
