Analogous claims can be made for climate physics; indeed the time of
applicability may in principle be very much longer both because the
system is better understood and because it operates on longer time
scales. So what is the substance of your complaint?
I'm not really here to complain. What does come to mind is that the
population in general (and activists in particular) are economically
naive and are voting for policies that are self-defeating (eg. ethical
foods, solar energy subsidies in US & Germany, grandfathering of
emission quotas in Europe). There is a consensus amongst economists
about that sort of thing but the experts are being disrespected.
It is as if climatologists could not agree on the global mean
temperature in a year's time to within +/- 60 degrees Kelvin (108 F).
In fact, such a coarse prediction of the earth's mean surface
temperature is possible with very high confidence over tens of
millions of years at least.
This is a highly unfair comparison. The Dow Jones index is well known
to be mathematically "chaotic". There are also innumerable positive and
negative feedbacks involved. An equivalent climactic prediction would
be a regional prediction of temperature that is dependant on whether
there is an el Nino or not. It is worth doing the calculations, but
there will be a wide spread of predictions. It is equivalent to a naive
person disrespecting climate scientists because they can't predict
weather events even a few weeks in advance, or a geologist predicting
earthquakes or volcanoes.
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