Well that just obviously isn't true. If it were, who'd keep buying the stupid things? If nothing else, natural market forces would simply prop up the farmers who aren't wasting time and money following a completely inaccurate book.

In statistics, two things are simple: predicting the very next step, and predicting what happens in 100,000 steps. It's the part in between that's tough. Weather is a function of statistics, essentially. It's why we can tell what the weather will be like tomorrow, and why we can tell that La Nina is going to affect us this year, but why we can't tell what the weather will be like on a Thursday 4 weeks from now.

> If it were, who'd keep buying the stupid things?

The same people who buy books about healing crystals, who donate to televangelists, who go to reiki "healers" and chiropractors, who believe in tarot firmly, etc.

Those people aren't in something resembling a zero-sum game, so they don't really make sense. Chiropractors sell back cracks, and the people buying that get exactly what they want.