White European-descended people have mostly abandoned it, because they know if they get a degree in it, they will be exploited for five years and then dumped in the gutter.
On the other hand, plenty of Asians are still studying math, including Indians and Chinese.

No, wait, there are a few white Euros studying science. The Russian Business Network is doing research on how to extort money from people over the Internet. That’s applied science.

2. Greg Lehmann: “I once worked on the design of an oven for extracting oil from shale.”

This kind of project still has some promise, although perhaps more for raw materials than for energy. I get most of my optimism from Next energy News. Renewable energy can be used to optimize output from low-quality sources like tar sands.

3. Fabius, the line between science and pseudo-science is an obsession of mine, and I take serious issue with your choice of Prof. Dutch as a philosopher of science. The List article from Mises.org looks to be higher-quality, though. Your site is a geopolitics site, but if you also hang out at any philosophy-of-science sites, you and I ought to schedule a debate.
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Fabius Maximus: Some comments…

1. Great reply, and the comparison with Asia is on target and disturbing. My article “Myths about Peak Oil: There are not enough petro-engineers!” illustrates your point with reference to petroeum engineers.

2. Next Energy News is fun to read but, as we see in the euphoria of the Bakken Formation, not always reliable. Note my follow-up article on this traces the euphoria back to one of their stories. Renewable energy is today and for many years an expensive input to for low-energy-yield (energy return on investment”) sources like kerogen mining. Possible in the future, but not in reasonable timeframe for current planning.

3. I did not characterize Steven Dutch in any way. let alone do an “appeal to authority”. I said his article was a nice introduction to the subject. Which it is imo, even if written by Donald Duck. “The article is not the author, the name is not the object, etc.” The subject gets very deep quickly, but ignoring the complexities is appropriate for a brief read.

Who is right? Both, it seems–it’s a matter of how much is recoverable. In a conventional oil well, about 20% of what’s actually there actually gets pumped out. In the Bakken foundation, which requires horizontal drilling through rock as hard as concrete, recovery with current technology will be in the range of two percent. “Oil Industry Excited Bakken Formation Prospects“, KFYR TV (11 April 2008).

So, let’s say, we drill like crazy and extract everything available in the Bakken foundation in one single year–all 3.65 billion bbl. The US consumes about 7.6 billion barrels each year. This means the Bakken foundation could supply the US for almost half a year.

If you could make horizontal drilling as a conventional well, you can multiply this by about ten. (I.e., 20 percent is recovered, rather than 2 percent). That would then supply the US for five years, instead of about half a year.

This is not cause for euphoria. It’s actually disappointing to learn that conventional wells leave 80 percent of the oil in the ground, and that drilling in Bakken will leave 98 percent in the ground. It will be cause for euphoria when someone develops extraction technology that works better than this. There’s obviously a lot of room for improvement.
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Fabius Maximus replies: I try to delete as few comments as possible, but this is on the borderline. Both the Next Energy News and the USGS estimates were of “undiscovered, technically recoverable
oil and associated gas resources”. The USGS knows about horizonal drilling, as this technology has been in use since the 1970’s — growing more sophisticated over time. This is factored into their estimates, and they cannot be multiplied by 10x.
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The comparison of unconventional reserves to current consumption is irrelevant. Unconventional resources like Bakken are typically low-flow compared to conventional fields. The extreme case of this are the vast depostis in Alberta’s bitumen (aka “oil sands”), Venezula’s heavy oil, and the US kerogen (aka “shale oil”). All of these are extracted by processes closer to mining than pumping, and hence have very low flows (and high capital requirements).

Change can be positive or negative, the difference between the 2 options is if we plan and manage change towards a desired and achievable goal (you’re trying to turn me into an optimist about the longer term damn you, but I’ll somehow find some more doom and gloom yet - though the short term is stuffed).

I should amplify this a bit, more as an education thing, I am noticing a change recently. I am an analyst, that my thing. I enjoy it, I’m very good at it, but .. there is also a but .. I am incurably honest and blunt. So you can imagine the enemies I have made.

To date I have been fired 4 times (got out twice before the inevitable happened), had a Govt organisation actually ringing up my clients telling them I was ‘rubbish’ (a very senior manager no less, that equalled a year of unemployment that nearly cost me my house, but my wonderful wife believes in me and supported me).

I get by and have a reasonable living standard (I’ve never been motivated towards money), not rich by any means, but struggling middle-middle class (with a mortgage), I have have a lot of fun though…

But recently things have been changing. I have a new, very well paying, full time job, I have long term private consulting and now I have a significant contract with a major organisation. Means not a lot of sleep, which at my age is an issue - oh I remember the all nighters I used to be able to pull, but I’m picking up a few hints that people are staring to listen. I talked to some senior executives, in my blunt way, about what could be done (based on what I’ve being doing for years) and they actually listened and even got excited, instead of, even a few years ago, of turning away and mumbling ‘what a whacker he is’.

The saddest thing is that I have no young people to work with and train, no one studies physics/math/statistics etc now (frustrated teacher coming out). I love teaching and training people

So there is hope, but it is going to take time, we all do our best and we must always do our best.

And FM is doing his best, and I thank (and more importantly respect) him.