Retired USGS predicts huge Cali quake next week 3/19-3/26

[Kaneman]

http://animalsandearthquakes.com/survey.htm

Animals and Earthquakes

Unusual Animal Behavior Prior to Earthquakes: A Survey in North-West California

by: David Jay Brown & Rupert Sheldrake

Abstract

During November of 1996 a telephone survey of 200 Santa Cruz County households was carried out in North-West California to find out how many people have observed unusual animal behavior prior to an earthquake. 15%
(N=30) of those surveyed reported that they have witnessed at least one occurrence of an animal acting unusual before an earthquake. Common observations included reports that the animals appeared frightened, agitated, excited, disoriented, or were missing. 66% (N=132) of households surveyed had pets. 57% (N=17) of those people who observed this phenomenon were pet owners, while 43% (N=13) were non-pet owners.
This phenomenon was observed 53% (N=1!9) of the time in dogs, 19% (N=7) of the time in cats, 6% (N=2) of the time in chickens, 6% (N=2) of the time in other birds, 6% (N=2) of the time in horses, 6% (N=20) of the time in cows, and 3% (N=I) of the time with possums. The lead times prior to the earthquake ranged from several seconds to a week, with the most frequent observations occurring between several minutes and several days prior to the earthquake. The implications of these results are discussed with regard to the possibility that some animals may possess a sensitivity to certain earthquake precursors, which could serve to help warn people of an approaching earthquake.

Introduction

Observations of unusual animal behavior prior to earthquakes have been reported around the world since the beginning of recorded history (Tributsch, 1982). In particular, the Chinese and Japanese have recorded these observations for many hundreds of years (Lee, Ando, and Kautz, 1976), and have made attempts to incorporate these reports into an earthquake warning system with some success (Allen, 1976). For example, on February 4, 1975 the Chinese evacuated the city of Haicheng several hours before a 7.3 magnitude earthquake largely on the basis of unusual animal behavior observations (Allen, 1976).

The anomalous behaviors most frequently reported include restlessness or excitability, a heightened sensitivity to mild stimulation, vocal responses, a tendency for borrowing, premature termination of hibernation, and leaving their normal habitats. The precursory lead times vary from just a few seconds to more than several months. (Lee, Ando, and Kautz, 1976). These unusual behaviors have been reported in a wide diversity of animal species, including many varieties of mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, and insects (Tributsch, 1982).

However, only a limited number of scientifically credible accounts of this phenomenon are available. The vast majority of observations are anecdotal, and are usually classified as folklore. One well-researched book on the subject-- When the Snakes Awake-- details much of what is known historically and scientifically about earthquakes and unusual animal behavior (Tributsch, 1982). Scientific accounts of this phenomenon through the mid seventies have been summarized in the "Proceedings of the 1976 USGS Conference on Abnormal Animal Behavior Prior to Earthquakes" (Evernden, 1976).

Some compelling evidence comes from Japan, where it has been reported that certain fish develop a heightened sensitivity to stimulation due to electrical changes prior to some earthquakes (Hatai and Abe, 1932; Suyehiro, 1968; Suyehiro, 1972.).

However, perhaps the most important evidence comes from a five year study conducted by the Stanford Research Institute-- Project Earthquake
Watch-- which obtained statistically significant results indicating that reports of unusual animal behavior increase prior to some earthquakes.
(Otis and Kautz, 1985).

The study reported upon in this paper was carried out as part of an international investigation into the unexplored abilities of animals, which began with the publication of Seven Experiments that Could Change the World (a book by one of this paper's authors). One primary thesis of the book is that there are many valuable research opportunities available which are relatively simple and inexpensive to carry out (Sheldrake, 1995).

This survey was done in order to find out how common these observations of unusual animal behavior are among the population of an earthquake-prone region. The survey was conducted by telephone in Santa Cruz County, California during November of 1996, and it involved 200 randomly-selected households.

Method

Data were collected by means of telephone interviews conducted by David Brown (D.B.), following a standard questionnaire format.

The households surveyed were in Santa Cruz County. Most were in and around the university-beach town of Santa Cruz, population 52,700, between Boulder Creek and Watsonville, in north-central California.
Santa Cruz was chosen because of its proximity to the epicenter of the
1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, and the San Andreas Fault. Santa Cruz is also within D.B.'s local proximity, and calling within the area helped to minimize the cost of the study.

Households were selected from the Pacific Bell Santa Cruz County 1996 telephone directory (area code 408) using an electronic random number generator to determine the page and column number, as well as its position on the page.

D.B. introduced himself as follows: "My name is David Brown. I'm conducting a survey on pets and animals. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions?" Approximately 20% of the people reached by phone agreed to partake in the survey. When a cooperative subject was found, D.B. then asked a series of questions and recorded the answers on a standard form as follows.

http://www.syzygyjob.com/index.php?o...d=13&Itemid=27

Who is Geologist Jim Berkland?
Written by Administrator
Wednesday, 01 June 2005
I am a country boy who grew up in the Valley of the Moon, in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco. My family moved to Glen Ellen in 1937, adding four to the population of 250. My Dad was a rock-hound, so I came naturally by my interests in geology, taking my first course in the subject at Santa Rosa Junior college, where I received my AA degree in 1950. I finished my upper division classes at U.C., Berkeley, receiving my BA in Geology in 1958. I went directly to work for six years with the U.S Geological Survey, involving laboratory and field-work throughout the western United States, including Alaska. Simultaneously, I worked on my Masters degree in Geology at San Jose State University, completing my course work in 1964. That same year I accepted a position as an Engineering Geologist with the U.S. Bureau or Reclamation, based in Sacramento. For the next five years I worked on engineering projects involving the storage and moving of water at a number of dam sites, tunnels and canals in California and Oregon.

After more than ten years with the Department of Interior, I resigned my position in order to work on my Doctorate at the University of California at Davis between 1969-1972. This was an exciting time to share in the new revolution in Earth Sciences, as the theory of Plate Tectonics fleshed out the discredited concepts of Continental Drift. At the same time I participated in a domestic revolution wherein I became a house husband, while my wife, Jan, provided our sole income as she continued her career in teaching. It was rewarding to share the hands on raising of our daughter, Krista and later, our son Jay.

I passed my PhD orals, but did not complete my dissertation within the required seven years, which is one of my few regrets. However, I have published more than 50 scientific papers, many of which utilized my PhD studies, including a paper delivered at the International Geological Congress at Montreal in 1972. This was at the outset of my 1972-73 academic year as an Assistant Professor of Geology at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, where I shared in the discovery of evidence for Pleistocene glaciation in the Southern Appalachians Following a productive year at Appalachian State University, I returned to California to become the first County Geologist for the most populous county in northern California, Santa Clara County. I held that position from 1973 until my retirement in 1994. Besides helping to establish geologic ordinances widely held as models in the field, I served on many committees and advisory boards. I also held a position for two years as an adjunct professor at San Jose State University.

It was during this period that I noted that many earthquakes occurred at the time of maximum tidal forces associated with the twice-monthly alignments of the Sun and Moon. I began to make informal predictions, scoring six out of eight during 1974, including the 5.2M Thanksgiving Day Quake of November 27th. This one hit the day after I had predicted it at a meeting of U.S.G.S. geologists and it shook my daughter and me while we were attending the first run of the movie, EARTHQUAKE, although we had originally thought it was part of the special effects.

Despite my successes in earthquake prediction (using tides and abnormal animal behavior), I found it almost impossible to publish on the subject in scientific journals. My career began to suffer although my credentials included fellowship in the Geological Society of America and membership in the Association of Engineering Geologists, Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Sigma Xi Science Honor Society, Peninsula Geological Society, Seismological Society of America, and others.

I have been recognized in about eight Who s Who? Publications, including the prestigious Who s Who in America and Who s Who in Frontier Science and Engineering. Also I received distinguished member awards from the Santa Clara County Engineers and Architects Association and the SABER Society at San Jose State University.

Perhaps the greatest simultaneous success and blot upon my career followed my naming and predicting in the Gilroy Dispatch a major World Series Earthquake four days before it happened. Erroneous suppositions about panicking the public caused the County to suspend me for 2 = months, and I was allowed to resume my career only after promising not to predict any more quakes on County time. Following that edict, I began to publish my predictions in my new publication, SYZYGY An Earthquake Newsletter, which has now completed eight successful years, with an international readership.

Also since 1990, with entrepreneur, Ryan Wood, I have also maintained Quakeline, a 900-line telephone information service that was originally nationwide, but now is restricted to the San Francisco Bay Area. My predictions have continued to score better than 75%, or three times the chance expectation of less than 25%.

Since mid-1997 I have developed an Internet Website (syzygyjob.com) with innovative Sitemaster, Will Fletcher. The site has been very popular, and often receives more than 200 hits per day, and more than 100 hits per hour following my five-hour interview on the Art Bell radio show. I have also appeared on Frontline, Sightings, Strange Universe, Northwest Afternoon, Town Meeting, Bill Cosby Show, The Other Side, Two at Noon, Evening Matinee, Jeff Rense show, George Putnam Show, Mitch Battros Show, Laura Lee Show, and many other broadcasts. In 1991 I was featured in the Farmer s Almanac, and my annual predictions are now published in the Dot Tide Tables.

Mainstream scientists generally try to debunk various aspects of my earthquake predictions or to ridicule me personally, with epithets such as crackpot or clown. My response is to question their own records in earthquake prediction, and to point out that the main action of a stream is not near the center, but closer to the edge. Near the fringes, with eddies and cross-currents, erosion and deposition are more effective, sometimes leading to changes in the course of the stream. Conformity does not lead to invention. Scientific progress is not achieved by majority vote. Following my pilgrimage to Gizeh with John Anthony West, I discovered the meaning of life: To seek your purpose and strive to achieve it. Anything less is a waste of existence. I am fortunate to have found that my purpose is to de-mystify earthquakes for the public so that meaningful preparations take the place of fatalistic attitudes, that often prove fatal.

The experts of High Science state that earthquake prediction is currently a scientific impossibility. I maintain that the topic is too important to leave to the experts and I continue to do the impossible with a better than 75% battering average , which is more than 300% greater than chance.

My wife and I are in the process of moving to the Valley of the Moon, where I am retiring after an absence of 30 years. I find it especially fitting, as the Moon is the dominant force in my Seismic Window Theory of earthquake prediction.

http://nhne-pulse.org/former-usgs-ge...or-california/

GEOLOGIST: ALARMING MAGNETIC FIELD CHANGES SIGNAL MAJOR QUAKE FOR WEST COAST
By Terrence Aym
Helium
March 16, 2011

Original Link

A former United States Geological Survey scientist says a major quake on the West Coast is imminent.

Jim Berkland predicts earthquakes…accurately.

Never heard of him? Perhaps you should — especially if you live on or near the West Coast of the United States, or know someone that does.

Anyone with an average 80 percent success rate predicting earthquakes should command attention, and lately Berkland has been in the limelight of the national media.

“The people that say you cannot predict earthquakes, they don’t know what they are talking about,” Berkland told the Santa Cruz Sentinel during a 2009 interview.

Appearing on late night radio shows for many years, since the great quake and tsunami that struck northeastern Japan the retired geologist has been finding his booking calendar full. His unpronounceable and difficult-to-spell website, syzygyjob.com, has crashed several times after his latest appearances on FOXNews with Neil Cavuto and the popular talk radio host Michael Savage’s show.

While Berkland has scored many direct hits with earthquake predictions — they fall within his self-described “seismec window” — his greatest claim to fame was his accurate prediction of the powerful 1989 temblor that rocked San Fransisco four days before it occurred.

Now the earthquake prognosticator admits he’s worried about the prospects of a strong quake hitting the West Coast of the US sometime during March 2011, particularly around March 19th.

The “ring of fire” that encircles the Pacific rim includes the region from Alaska south to South America. During the past several years earthquake and volcanic activity has been on the upswing all along the rim except on the northeastern perimeter.

Berkland believes that’s about to change. He told as much to Cavuto: “The month of October, March, and April are the three most devastating earthquakes in terms of damage in the San Francisco Bay Area in history. And we are having on the 19th of this month not only the full moon, but within an hour the closest approach of the moon to the earth until the year 2016. The next day is the equinoctial tides. So you’re bringing together three of the maximum tide raising forces. We know about the ocean tides. But there is also an Earth tide. And there is a tide in the ground water. All of these help to release sudden, built up strain, and cause earthquakes.”

Although thought by many of his peers to be a maverick, Berkland remains unfazed. His track record far outstrips any of his critics.

His approach to predicting earthquakes and volcanic eruptions is certainly non-traditional. Using tidal flooding tables based upon lunar perigees — times when the moon is closest in its orbit to the earth having a measurable impact on gravitational pull — and the bi-monthly alignment of the sun and moon, he calculates percentage risk of probable events in given regions.

He also takes other things into consideration like the measurement of change in the magnetic field that he says are indications of changes in the earth’s core and mantle. Tip offs of such changes can be seen in strange animal behavior such as lost pets and the mass beaching of whales and other sea creatures. Birds also provide clues.

Recent research on the geomagnetic field and its relation to tectonic plates, earthquakes, and volcanic action tends to support his hypotheses.

Berkland says that the approaching seismic window is one of the largest in many years. He sees it developing between the 19th to the 26th of March 2011.

In the FOXNews interview he stressed, “I’m saying we just had a massive fish kill. Maybe a million fish died in Redondo Beach. They had a massive fish sweep in Mexico. We just had a bunch of whales come in close to San Diego.”

Berkland is convinced that subtle changes in the magnetic field are the precursors to large earthquakes.

“Changes in the magnetic field often precede larger earthquakes. Most animals have the mineral magnetite in their bodies, including people.” Magnetite, a form of ferrous oxide, is very sensitive to magnetic fields.

“Just before the World Series quake,” he explained, “there was very unusual beaching of rare whales in the Ocean Beach, in San Francisco. Just after that, an equally rare pygmy sperm whale washed up at Santa Cruz, within about five miles of the epicenter of the World Series quake. That kind of beaching had never occurred before nor since. So we’re looking for strange fish coming into from deep water to the shallow water, wild animals coming into cities.

“I used to just scoff at these kinds of things, because I was a mainstream geologist until I found out that earthquakes are fitting a pattern. The big earthquake in the Indian Ocean followed massive beachings of whales in Taiwan — and not [just] Taiwan, but New Zealand and Australia and Tasmania. And then within couple of days, they had a 8.3 in south of New Zealand, and then came the 9.1 in the Indian Ocean, with the big tsunami, on the very day of the full moon.”

The last really big quake that occurred on the northeastern rim of the ring of fire occurred in Alaska.

“The previous big quake and tsunami was in Alaska, which was a 9.2 magnitude event, on the day off the full moon, on the 27th of March.”

That mega-thrust earthquake, known today as The Great Alaskan Earthquake, hit at 5:36 P.M. Alaska Standard Time on Good Friday, March 27, 1964. The ground split open, highways buckled, entire buildings collapsed and several tsunamis were generated. About 131 people died.

When asked if the quake that’s coming will be another 9.0 event, Berkland admitted he just didn’t know.