Physicist and leading climate scientist Dr. Jason Smerdon ’98 of the  Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Earth Institute at Columbia  University, on #WhyGustavus from Pullman, Washington, his paths to  science and academia, his undergraduate and graduate school experiences  (featuring haikus, luck, contingency, and potassium cyanide), his  scholarship with historians and the influence of English courses on his  career, the reality, evidence, and politicization of human-influenced  climate change, doable technologies and our agency in response to the  crisis, and the case for physics and the liberal arts. Click here for a transcript.