What's a mathematician to do?

Via Andy Revkin's blog at the New York Times, I found this dialog with a student who asked:

I am someone with a deep-seated desire to help the planet remain as habitable as possible in the face of the trials humanity is putting it through. I’d like to devote my career to this cause, but am young and haven’t chosen a definitive career path yet. My bachelors is in pure math and I am considering graduate study in either applied math or statistics. I’m curious what you would recommend to someone in my position.

Gavin Schmidt from NASA responded on Realclimate.org, and a lively discussion followed.  Read it here. 

Picture from Flickr user Martha Dear, licensed under Creative Commons.