Editor’s note: The writer is addressing the question, “Would Albert Einstein be a global warming skeptic if he were alive today?”

BALTIMORE — Albert Einstein was too busy discovering the building blocks of the universe to spend much effort dealing with something as mundane as climate change.

Although climate change is a national obsession for us ordinary mortals, it likely wouldn’t concern Einstein if he were among us today.

To consider that he would bother to be a climate change skeptic is like thinking Babe Ruth would stoop to being a batboy or Tiger Woods a caddy.

To make sure he had enough time and mental energy for his major projects, Einstein cut out nonessentials, and took minimalism for his lifestyle.

He even gave most of his Nobel Prize money to his wife. He rarely wore socks or suspenders. He couch surfed when he traveled. When he was scheduled to visit a group of prominent scientists, he emerged from the third-class train car to greet them. A man of simplistic tastes, indeed.

But he knew well how to distinguish right from wrong.

For example, concerning truly big things, soon after Einstein learned of the atomic bomb’s use in Japan, he advocated for nuclear disarmament.

He formed the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists and backed Manhattan Project scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer in his opposition to the hydrogen bomb.

Between 1905 and 1925, Einstein transformed humankind’s understanding of nature, from the smallest part to that of the cosmos as a whole. His name became synonymous in the public mind with the word “genius.”

Even today, we’re still exploring Einstein’s universe. The general theory of relativity was the first major theory of gravity since Newton’s, more than 250 years before, and the results had a huge effect worldwide.

The London Times called it a “Revolution in Science” and a “New Theory of the Universe.” Einstein began touring the world, speaking in front of crowds of thousands.

In 1921, Einstein won the Nobel Prize in physics, but for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. This law played a key role in the development of modern electronics, including radio and television.

In one paper, he stated that light travels both in waves and in particles, called photons. This idea is an important part of the quantum theory. Another of his noted papers was about the motion of small particles suspended in a liquid or gas called Brownian motion. It confirmed the atomic theory of matter.

Einstein also demonstrated that absolute time must be replaced by a new absolute: the speed of light.

Einstein totally dismissed the “old physics.” He saw a world where space and time are relative and the speed of light is absolute. It was then thought that space and time were absolute and the speed of light was relative.

Most famously, he asserted the equivalence of mass and energy, which led to the famous formula E=mc2.

In 1910, Einstein answered a basic question: “Why is the sky blue?” His paper solved the problem by examining the cumulative effect of the scattering of light by individual molecules in the atmosphere.

Working at that level, you leave it to lesser minds to explain why the Earth is getting slightly hotter — or it isn’t.

— An independent journalist, Whitt Flora covered the White House for The Columbus Dispatch and was chief correspondent for Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine.