Global Warming Is My Fault, and I'm Sorry

Español: Es calentamiento global es mi culpa, y lo siento

It’s mid November, and my kids complain¹ that there hasn’t been a single snowfall. In their eyes, snow transforms the world into a magical wonderland of sledding, snowmen, and forts. To me, it means icy roads and white-knuckled drives.

To those of you who are relatively new readers, I've written previously about how I came late to driving, only learning after my second child was born. Now, as my kids search the sky for any hint of snow, I find myself whispering my own counter-prayer: please G-d, not today. Not when I have to drive.

It’s not just their imagination; there has been a real shift. According to Salem State University professor Stephen Young, Boston has lost more than 30 days of winter snow cover since 2000.² "The winter of my childhood is long gone," he tells NBC10 Boston, echoing the concerns of many who feel a deep loss over the changing climate.

Economist and physicist David Friedman³ has a different take. He notes that warming could make some areas more habitable. Northern permafrost might melt into fertile farmland, and new areas could become livable. This is a good reminder that with every change, there’s a balance of loss and gain.⁴

Personally, I look for comfort in the words of the Torah. After the Flood, God promises Noah, "While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease."⁵ It’s a reassurance that while climates shift, the fundamental rhythms of the world are not in our hands. We can trust that this world, with its patterns and cycles, is still under Divine care, snow or no snow.

And

What a world it is!

Says theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking:⁶

"The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron... The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life."

Consider how Earth sits perfectly in the "Goldilocks Zone."⁷ Everything is just right. A bit closer to the Sun, and we’d overheat like Venus; a bit farther, and we’d freeze like Mars. It’s as if an All Powerful Being carefully set Earth at just the right distance.

🌡

Our atmosphere is another marvel. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson⁸ says:

“A simple layer of air envelops our planet. If Earth had no atmosphere, it would be as inhospitable as the moon—baking in heat during the day, freezing at night, and being struck by cosmic rays all the while. Our atmosphere does more than sustain life; it protects us from the harsh realities of the universe.”

🌎

And what about the moon? Take it from Bill Bryson, a writer:⁹

"Without the Moon’s steadying influence, the Earth would wobble like a spinning top, with chaotic and unpredictable shifts in its axis. This would lead to extreme and rapid climate changes, making it challenging—if not impossible—for complex life to survive. The Moon’s gravitational pull keeps our planet's tilt stable, providing consistent seasons and a climate that’s balanced enough to sustain life."

Our moon isn’t just a beautiful fixture in the night sky; it’s a stabilizing force that has allowed Earth to maintain the consistency needed for life to flourish.

🌙

Beneath our feet, the molten core spins, creating a magnetic field that shields us from harmful cosmic radiation. Without it, Earth’s atmosphere could be stripped away, turning us into another Mars. It’s a quiet protection, but essential for life. Stephen Hawking¹⁰ says:

"The Earth’s core acts like a giant dynamo, generating a magnetic field that shields us from the charged particles of the solar wind. Without this magnetic shield, the solar wind would gradually strip away the atmosphere, just as it has done on Mars."

🧲

Water, too, has unique properties that sustain life. Unlike most substances, water expands when it freezes, causing ice to float. This layer of ice insulates the water below, allowing life to survive through winter. If ice sank, our oceans would freeze solid from the bottom up, and life as we know it might never have emerged. Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman¹¹ said:

"You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. So let’s look a little closer. Water’s one of those things: you think it’s simple, but it does crazy things—like ice floats! It floats! Try to find another liquid that behaves like that. It’s almost like the universe planned it."

💧

Almost like?

We know that these aren’t just coincidences. They’re a series of cosmically important choices, each one woven into the fabric of our world to create the conditions for life. While we should be responsible about our planet, we can also marvel at the design behind it all, finding peace in these patterns and knowing it wasn’t us who planned it.

Snow or no snow, our existence rests on a chain of Divine miracles. And perhaps that's the real comfort: the same intelligence that crafted these delicate systems with such precision hasn't stopped watching over them—or us.

1. As you know from my parenting posts, my kids rarely complain—but I write as if they do, just to spare the feelings of other parents who haven’t yet signed up for my parenting classes.

2. https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/snow-cover-decline-boston-study/3106352/

3. David D. Friedman is an American economist, legal scholar, and author known for his work in libertarian theory and economics. Despite his academic background in chemistry and physics, he is best known for his influential book The Machinery of Freedom. Friedman is also the son of Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman and has contributed significantly to discussions around economic systems, individual liberty, and legal theory from a libertarian perspective.

I'll take the liberty of using the following quote which I believe summarizes his position:

“In summary, I found four problems with the mortality calculation from Cromar as used in Rennert:

2 neglecting the effect of income on temperature-related mortality,

ignoring the pattern of temperature change implied by greenhouse warming,

neglecting the effect of technological change,

ignoring adaptation by migration.

The first two can be corrected by substituting the result in Carleton for that in Cromar, reducing the SCC due to temperature-related mortality from $90/ton to something between $17.1/ton and $36.6/ton. Correcting the third and fourth should further reduce it by a large but unknown amount.”

Critique of “Comprehensive evidence implies a higher social cost of CO2”

And here: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2014/02/david_friedman_14.html

And here: https://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2014/02/a-climate-falsehood-you-can-check-for.html?m=1

And here: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Machinery_3d_Edition/The%20Misuse%20of%20Externality%20Arguments.htm#_ftn1

If we cannot produce an a priori reason to expect warming to produce net negative externalities, perhaps we can work out the consequences and simply add up their cost. Warming can be expected to raise sea levels a foot or two by the end of the century. Looking at the other side of the equation, human habitability at present is limited by cold not by heat; the equator is populated, the poles are not. An increase in global temperature that raised sea levels by a foot or two would push temperature contours in the northern hemisphere hundreds of miles further north, increasing the area of earth warm enough for human habitation by about a thousand times the area lost to sea level rise. On average, the land gained would be less valuable per square mile than the land lost, but would one expect it to be a thousand times less valuable?

4. He calls these externalities.

5. Genesis 8:22

6. A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking

7. Quote from Wikipedia:

In astronomy and astrobiology, the habitable zone (HZ), or more precisely the circumstellar habitable zone (CHZ), is the range of orbits around a star within which a planetary surface can support liquid water given sufficient atmospheric pressure.^{[1][2][3][4][5]} The bounds of the HZ are based on Earth's position in the Solar System and the amount of radiant energy it receives from the Sun. Due to the importance of liquid water to Earth's biosphere, the nature of the HZ and the objects within it may be instrumental in determining the scope and distribution of planets capable of supporting Earth-like extraterrestrial life and intelligence.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitable_zone

8. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, Neil deGrasse Tyson

9. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson

10. A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking

11. A Short History of Time, Richard Feynman

(Yes, if you're reading through these footnotes, you'll notice that they do not know what “short” means. Also, thanks for reading.)