I’d thought originally about “General Questions” for this post; but, reflecting that essentially I think I get the picture, about the person involved – probably appropriate, is a sub-forum for broader things than just “who’s this bod, and what are they all about?”.
I’m in the UK, where the gentleman concerned, is presumably little-known anyway: have just heard of him for the first time, in the course of a visit to relations. One of same is – while a lovely person – a bit given to harbouring strange notions. The latest of such which she seems to have taken on board in a big way, involves a guy (American) called Dutch Sinse. These relations of mine have friends in Oregon; the wife (the Dutch Sinse enthusiast) is planning to go out there for an extensive visit in summer this year, centring on friends’ daughter’s wedding. She seems considerably bothered by a perceivedly likely contingency of extreme tsunami-type events some time very soon, all along the British Columbia / Washington State / Oregon coasts. The friends live a good way inland, near Mount Hood; but they have relations and friends who live on the coast. Lady of whom I write, is declaring that she will stay well away from the coast in her time in Oregon; but she’s concerned for the coast-dwelling relations and friends. She appears to have appointed Dutch Sinse, her prophet / guru about all such matters; when I was staying there recently, she was logging onto the Net evening after evening, “to see what Dutch has to say”.
I pick up, “to best of…” the info that Dutch Sinse is a maverick seismologist (or self-declared ditto), with basic message (with some quite rational-sounding back-up) that a great deal happens, with great frequency, as regards volcanic / tidal wave activity, over the majority of the globe – more than “orthodox” science / information, lets on to. He seems highly convinced – on the basis of what happened there x decades / centuries ago, and ditto before that – that the Pacific Northwest coast is overdue for a horrendous tsunami.
Initial searching on the “Dope”, gave essentially no references whatever to Dutch Sinse; subsequent Googling, gave the impression that basically the attention paid to him, is by himself on his website; and by various folk in what I think of as the “mystical / magical”, as opposed to the “scientific / reasoning-oriented” camp. I’d just be interested to know whether Dopers have indeed heard of the guy; and whether universal view of him is that he inhabits strictly the lunatic fringe – or whether any of his output might conceivably make real-world sense?
I had never heard of Dutch Sinse prior to this thread. I just googled him and it appears he is a guy named Michael Janitch whose online name is Dutchsinse. He posts videos online in which he predicts upcoming earthquakes. He also posts about a number of other fringe theories. He has not made any credible predictions of any significance.
Well, there have been lots of earthquakes and tsunamis and volcanic eruptions that have hit the Pacific Coast over the centuries, so it seems pretty safe to predict that more are going to hit in the future.
It also seems pretty safe to say that some random guy isn’t going to be able to predict exactly when these events are going to happen. I mean, when Mt St Helens was threatening to blow up, scientists documented the signs and predicted that the volcano was going to go up pretty soon, but nobody could predict the exact day or even week or month. Just “Hey, this volcano is swelling up pretty bad, so expect something to happen sometime soon, or maybe it will all just go away.”
Earthquakes in this part of the country tend to be much more severe, but also much less frequent than further south. And we have a lot of potentially active volcanoes in addition to Mt Saint Helens up in Washington State which has recently been active.
Flying into Eugene the first time, I was on the right side of airplane noticing all the mountains–Shasta, Crater Lake, Hood, Franklin, etc. Then it hit me, those are ALL volcanoes! Oh well, we couldn’t have stood Escondido for another day…
I don’t think US west coast tsunamis are things that can be covered up. And scientists LOVE sharing earthquake data. Online you can find lots of recent Washington earthquake data. Wikipedia even has a list of all Washington earthquakes over 5. The Washington State Department of Natural Resources has a page on earthquakes.
That’s the kind of prediction you’ll get from someone who knows the state of the science. Anyone who is making, say, finer tuned predictions is using the kind of math used to “predict” lottery numbers. And anyone who says there’s data that’s being kept from the populace is lying.
Or – to fix name in my mind when first heard of, I thought: “I’m Dutch, since I was born in Amsterdam and have lived there all my life…”
Thanks, all, for thoughts. In seems clear that Mr. Janitch / …sinse is, to put it politely, an extremely “fringe” type. My relation his new devotee is, as said, a sweetie; but she does tend to get convinced of the truth of some very odd stuff.