Last time I checked, Astrophysicists and Cosmologists weren't in the business of studying earthquakes, let alone predicting them.
I could just as well ask you how many animals are able to build telescopes, rockets, and satellites.
Lastly, no one can accurately predict the weather more than a week in advance. Does that imply that scientists CAN'T measure the age of the Universe? Not for a minute. It merely is a reflection of the reality that some phenomona are dynamical and inherently sensitive to initial conditions; hence they are unpredictable beyond the short term, which has nothing to do with the article posted here.
Your argument hurts your case. With weather forecasts, we can evaluate predictions against actual results, and thus gain an understanding of the limitations of meteorological sciences. The ability to observe the actual establishes the limitations of predictive technology, thus giving an objective measure of reliability.
If a particular scientific endeavor lacks predictive reliability, then it would seem an inefficient allocation of scarce educational resources and a waste of brain power. We should defund such pursuits at universities and send the $ to economically productive areas such as mechanical or electrical engineering. In fact, I'd just as soon fund wymyn's studies as quantum physics.
A better analogy is that no one can accurately measure what the weather was a week ago, or tell when the last hailstorm was, solely by looking at today's weather. Sure there are indicators which give a pretty good idea, but not to the accuracy claimed about the age & origin of the universe.
And yes I know that cosmologists don't really study earthquakes - but they DO use practically the same scientific methods and few ounces of grey matter.