[Mongoose]

I though law school granted BS degrees.

[Mikes]

TL;DR:

Being wrong is integral part of science.

There are no predictions in science that have no error bars.

Therefore, making wrong predictions illegal will destroy any sort of predictive science.

If you can be convicted of making a wrong prediction, then no one should be making any predictions because there's always a chance that it'll be completely wrong, just a little wrong, or sometimes right.


noobs don't know 'bout science

But then you can accuse them of not having made a prediction when they could have made one that could have saved lives...

Not doing something that the law deems to be a necessary action can be prosecuted just as well as doing something illegal.


Anyways... this will get smashed in the appeal I m pretty sure. (Even if it's for no other reason than to deal with the worldwide outrage.)

[Flipside]

Earthquakes are some of the most famously unpredictable events out there. It's like trying to predict an avalanche, you know that one is on the cards, but it could start in anything from 20 seconds to months in the future. That's why, with avalanches, we take the initiative and encourage them under controlled conditions, thereby removing that margin of error. We are not afforded such luxury in the case of Tectonic events.

Maybe some of these Italian politicians should go live in the more active areas of Japan or along the San Andreas fault for a while, maybe take a tour of the facility in LA and see for themselves just how much effort is being put into predicting these events, they might understand that Geological prediction is far from a precise art.

Edit: Though, in fairness, Italy has an unfortunate historical legacy of not really 'getting' the risk of doing things like building towns at the foot of a volcano

[The E]

I've split out the weather derail. Please continue to discuss the ramifications of silly italian judges making silly decisions here.