In general, the more interesting the economic issue, the less it looks like science and the more it looks like history. He pointed out that weather forecasts deal with scalar variables such as temperature, while economics deals with non-scalar variables such as confidence. Weather predictions are based on precise functional relations such as how variations in temperature and humidity cause rain, which have been established from long-term experience. By contrast, functional relations in economics are mostly conjectural in character. Weather predictions do not affect the weather.
Economic forecasts can affect the economy.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change consists of just over 1000 climatologists from around the world. The third assessment report of the IPCC has increased the urgency of two earlier forecasts of global warming and reduced the uncertainty about the accuracy of the models on which the forecasts are based. Economists could never reach this degree of consensus because economics is about value, broadly defined. Economics is a moral science. Kenneth Davidson is a staff writer.