Subject: Jim Berkland Man Who Predicts Earthquakes.
Part 3. May 15, 2008.
This shows how animals act before a very large
earthquake.
........................................................
........................................................
I didn't know about it at the time. Well, if the
earth is bulging up and down, maybe that's limbering up
the fault lines. And if they're meta-stable-ready to
fail-- this little extra stress of the movement of the
earth, the undulation, underneath this gravitational
stress, might trigger the fault into action. So I said,
hmm, we've had six quakes here-- the day of the full
moon, two days after the full moon, on the day of
perigee, six days after the new moon and perigee.
All six quakes that hit the Bay Area from my arrival
there in September until January 8th confirmed this
wild idea. So I thought, well, if it continues like
this, we should have a quake within the next week. I
told the folks around the office that there was likely
to be a quake around here in the next few days. They
said, how big? Well, these others were mainly 3's and
low 4's, and since this is even a higher tidal force,
probably a 4 to a 5. Two days later 4.4 hit down in
Buellor, and I said to myself, boy, this is simple.
What's so tough about predicting quakes? Why isn't
everyone using this method? I still don't know why
everybody isn't using it.
When I went to Peru in November of 74, 94, our
Peruvian of Inca descent said after the eclipse, I am
so happy you were able to see our eclipse. We in Peru
have a tradition we watch the eclipse, and then we wait
for the earthquake. I said, would you say that again
for my video camera, please? Totally caught me by
surprise- my idea, maintained by the Incas. So I had an
interview with her for like ten minutes with the video
camera. No doubt, they could see the relationship. She
said, what's unusual is that we already had the quake.
Koosco shook with a 4 magnitude quake, three hours
after the moment of totality, she said. Usually it
takes a day or so, and it's possibly bigger.
The next day a 6.2 hit Peru, and there was no quakes
as strong for the first half of November. The strongest
quake in the world occurred the day after the total
eclipse, which lasted about four and a half minutes.
The one in Mexico lasted six minutes, and there was no
announced Mexican quake. But there was a Peruvian quake
on that same day, even though there only saw a partial
eclipse.
David: So this gave you some additional confirmation
that you were onto something.
James: Yeah, time and again. I mean, if you go into
the computer and ask for all the literature showing
earthquakes and tides, over three hundred titles come
up. So when a reporter goes from me to the U.S.G.S. or
to Berkeley, and they say, oh no, we don't support what
Berkland's doing. There's no evidence, no correlation-
it just shows they are blindly ignorant of the world
literature. They're just ignorant of it, and so I no
longer consider it my problem. I think it's their
problem. They're not looking at the evidence, and I see
it time and again. There's John Mack, Galileo,
whatever. If your idea doesn't match the ruling theory,
the mainstream opinion, there's something wrong with
you. So we have to have legislation, and off with his
head.
David: According to Thomas Kuhn novel approaches tend
to appeal to younger scientists, people in graduate
school, whereas the older establishment, which has more
invested in the past, is less open to new ideas.
James: Yes, so I've had a lot of good advice. My old
mentor with U.S.G.S. said, Jim, you know you probably
will never convince your severest critics. Your goal
should be to outlive them, or have your ideas outlive
them. And I've been so pleased because I have been
doing this since 74 with. My first couple years I kept
it under wraps because I valued my scientific
reputation. I didn't want to be iconoclast really. I
want to do my work, try to increase public safety on
geological matters, and try to resolve differences
between property owners in area or between different
scientific branches, and try to bring the Santa Clara
County up to speed. So with my work in the U.S.G.S., my
friends there, a lot of friends with the California
division of Mines and Geology and the Bureau of
Reclamation, I really felt needed. And for the first
fifteen years with the county I had hit my ultimate
niche. Everyday I was was excited to get up, and was
ready to go, thinking, what's today going to bring?
David: You'd been predicting earthquakes since 1974,
but this was primarily with tides and the moon. You
hadn't gotten interested in animals or the lost pet ads
yet?
James: No, not until 79, after five years. A lot of
things happened in 79. One thing I learned of was a
U.S.G.S. study that lasted four years, taking
predictions from numerologists, astrologers, psychics,
dreamers, whatever the source, and filing their
predictions. This is because they were being troubled
by having to answer all these wild ideas that people
come up and say, okay, there's going to be a quake
that's going to destroy Los Angeles. California is
going to slide into the sea. The last days of the great
state of California. That was called "The Book". Then
for several years it really disturbed the U.S.G.S.,
because they had to answer all these people that read
the book and loved it as gospel truth.
o, they decided, let's establish a track record,
which is the way to go. Take all of these people, and
say they're predicting. Okay, what did you say last
time? How come you missed that one? Why should we
believe you know? Good approach, that's great. So I
heard about this, and I sent my predictions into them,
with the newspaper articles and everything. And they
were trying to get me, while I was out in the field a
number of days, and they finally got through to me, and
they said, Jim, Jim, the computer spit out your name,
you've got the 99th percentile level, which means
there's only one chance in a hundred that what you're
doing is accidental.
But we think you've been lucky you know. Keep on
predicting and you fall back in the grass with the rest
of them. I said, well, gee that's good news.
Well, so fine, but if you tell some media person I
told you this I'll deny it. And that didn't bother me
too much either, because you know this is kind of
informal, and okay at least I'm achieving something
that caught his attention, and I'm sure they're going
to do something with this.
When they closed the program about a year later I
read in the summary that no one had achieved the 99th
percentile level, and no scientist had even bothered to
submit a prediction. I quickly called him. I said Roger
Hunter at the U.S.G.S. in Golden, Colorado. Roger, how
could you say that nobody hit the 99th percentile? I
know you told me not to tell the media, but I hit it.
And how could you say no scientist even bothered to
submit a prediction? I'm a fellow in the Geological
Society, and I'm a scientist. I published over 55
papers, and had responsible positions.
Well, yeah, that was a little wrong, he said. I meant
to say that an insufficient number of scientists
submitted predictions to make it statistically
meaningful. Well, that is certainly is far different
from saying none had done it, or none had hit 99th
percentile. He said, well, we'll probably correct that
in the final version or something. He never did.
The same thing happened when I joined Earthquake
Watch at SRI under contract with the U.S.G.S. to see if
they could reproduce what the Chinese had done. Before
the Haichang earthquake they had a system there, of
maybe a hundred thousand peasants measuring water
levels, checking radon with it's film exposure,
measuring little tilt-meters, doing simple things. So
they just day after day said, oh little tilt in the
ground here. Or they would see where the patterns of
earthquakes were. And animals especially-- farm
animals, wild animals, pets. And because of the
accumulation of data just before March 3, 1975 they
evacuated the city of Haichang of about 100,000 people.
They had lectures on communism, and had tents and
blankets and things up on the hill.
David: They evacuated everybody on the basis of what?
James: Mainly animals.
David: What did they notice?
James: There was water-level changes. There was radon
gas sudden increase. There was a pattern of small
earthquakes in an area where they hadn't had big
earthquakes before, and suddenly they stopped.
Meanwhile the zoo animals were pacing back and forth.
The birds were crying. Turtles made noises, like they
were shrieking. Fish were jumping out of the aquarium.
I've got the complete listing. I have probably a dozen
or two different things. The pheasants were crying at
night, and would not sleep on the ground like they
normally would do. The common thread, what I actually
have never seen anyone else even mention, but it's
quite clear in all these reports-- is that animals try
to leave their normal places of security prior to an
earthquake, on first awareness of an earthquake, which
sounds weird.
Why don't they go into security? Well, some do, but
those are not considered anomalous. If a cat jumps on
your lap and wants to be petted, that's not as
interesting as if he jumps up on top of the shelves,
leaps to the TV, knocks things down, and just runs
around the house like he's crazy. If he runs off, and
gets hit by a car or something, people say that's
unusual. There are many aspects of it.
Part 3.
John Winston. johnfw@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
|
