I'll weigh in with an Australian perspective as this has been a hot
topic for the Australian Geoscience Council (AGC) which is our
equivalent of the AGI although perhaps more broadly supported than AGI.
It is made up from the eight major Geoscience organisations here and
represents an estimated 8000 Australian based geoscientists. (no one
knows because of cross membership so we take a punt).
Two factors have accelerated a longer term trend: Covid-19 slashed
university incomes because of the drop in overseas students and in a
move to drive higher enrolments in science; the Federal Government
reduced the cost of a science degree and increased the cost of arts and
law. Rather than the universities taking the bucket of money and
dividing it up as they had previously, they proportionally reduced
funding to Science departments and increased them to Arts/Law!
Machiavelli is alive and thriving in our university sector.
As a result we have seen the effective closure of geology departments at
Newcastle and Macquarie over the past month with likely more to come.
Earth Science is still being taught at those institutions but with a
focus on environment and climate change. This has lead groups like the
Minerals Council of Australia (MCA), Australian Institute of Mining and
Metallurgy (AusIMM) and Australian Institute of Geoscientists (AIG) (the
latter two are members of the AGC) to talk about accreditation of
courses or institutions, something I believe you already have in Canada
and which the Australian Institute of Physics (AIP) already do at an
institutional level here.
Parallel to all this, as Alan points out, universities are moving away
from specialist science degrees to a more general science model. I think
this is a good thing as it is easier to teach someone with good maths,
physics and chemistry, geology than to teach a geologist, maths physics
and chemistry. Some of the geophysics graduates from Australia over the
past decade were so focussed that they had no maths, physics, chemistry
or geology in any useful sense which was just dumb. The upshot of all
that however is that post graduate specialisation training will be
required. The universities are unlikely to be capable of providing that
as they have and will continue to cut back on specialists and the
responsibility will fall to the end users. The end users are made up
from two categories, employers and professional/scientific organisations
(like ASEG, SAGA, KEGS and SEG) The traditional employers have largely
sidelined themselves by not supporting their geoscience staff and are no
longer capable of nor want to spend money training new graduates. In
Australia more hard rock geophysicists are employed by consulting groups
than by miners. Groups like SGC have more geophysicists in Perth than
BHP and Rio combined, have worldwide. The four largest consulting groups
in Perth have around 50 geophysicists between them and there are a large
number of smaller groups and lone operators. The transition from
companies to consultants and contractors as the main employers is done.
Although the on the job training in consulting groups is great and
employees get to see more data in a year than a company geophysicist
will see in a life time, the broader training, particularly in geology
is harder for us to deliver. The AGC see this as a great opportunity for
the Geoscience organisations to step up and provide the necessary
material in bite sized packets as a set of micro-credentials (likely the
buzz word for the 2020's) with the AGC acting as an accreditation and
central credential registry or at least creating an environment where
one or more of its Member Organisations (MOs) does that. In many cases
the courses may well be given by academics or more likely, ex-academics
but will be run by the MOs.
Meanwhile we (the AGC) shuffle deck chairs on the academic titanic by
lobbying institutions that are considering closure of their geology
departments to stay open and working with groups like MCA and Science &
Technology Australia (STA) to lobby government for change. I'm not
optimistic that this lobbying will have the impact we are looking for so
the post graduate training approach outlined above is our most likely
path and is something we can control.
Cheers
Kim
On 14/11/20 6:55 am, Ed Cunion via SEGMIN wrote:
Breaking a 2020 resolution made a month or so ago about not being
drawn into a non-technical rabbit hole discussion on Segmin! Please
excuse my verbiage.
Agree with much of that Alan, having worked in the field mostly and
abroad with an international mining house and U.S. Peace Corps.
Definitely can get behind groups like Geoscientists without Borders
and others that are like minded be they non profit or commercial
endeavours of any kind. Mining companies too employ globally.
You got to get out into the field though and do the work? Even if
you're a gold panner etc. It not so easy an endeavour for an
individual geoscientist to go out on their own at the start to say
look for deep deposits under cover, but there are some small groups or
individuals doing well or at least Ok, through the past year let's say
who have experience. There are some legendary mineral resource finds
by small persistent operators though globally, and in the not so
distant past.
Things, busineses though seem to be moving toward the
Amazonification, Walmartization or Home Depotification of many
industries, many geoscientists aren't that kind of scientist. Not that
these businesses haven't been patronized from time to time or regularly.
The 2 cents, for what it's worth. Have found here there's always a
learning curve to climb somewhere in the geosciences, unless one
knows it all.
The boom and bust nature is not a new phenomena, been there and seen that,
Cheers,
Ed
On Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 1:14 PM Alan G Jones (Geophysics) via SEGMIN
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hi Sarah, and colleagues,
That slide pertains ONLY to US jobs, it doesn't reflect the global
market at all. And it's 13 months old (dates from Oct 2019):
https://www.americangeosciences.org/sites/default/files/DataBrief_2019-010_BLS_EmploymentProjections_2018-2028.pdf
Yes, oil&gas is a sunsetting industry (but not in our lifetimes),
and "we" have to prepare for that. But there is a commensurate
explosive growth in renewable industries that need competent
geophysicists to find the huge amount of resources required for
those industries. Even Elon Musk has expressed worry about access
to high quality nickel.
The world needs geophysicists like never before, but different
geophysicists from the past. All the easily-found resources have
been found. So it's now deeper targets or poorly-accessible
targets or targets beneath thick cover. And including as much data
as possible in a formal sense, so joint inversion of seismics,
EM/MT and potential fields.
Plus, we now have roles to play in environmental and engineering
that we've been bypassed on before.
However, as others have noted this need for fundamental geophysics
is being ignored by Universities, who are closing down or
curtailing solid earth geophysics across the western world. If
Earth Science departments are stable in numbers it is because
solid earth geophysicists are being replaced with climate change
specialists. That's fine as we need them too. But many Earth
Science departments are losing numbers - the current situation in
Australia is frightening, especially as Australia relies so
heavily on its natural resources so you would think there would be
a national strategy for geophysics education at tertiary level.
But no, as in all other countries, each University is an island
unto itself.
Also, the nature of graduate training needs to change. A PhD
student should not be a narrow-minded clone of her/his supervisor,
which is the old paradigm, but should have 2-3 supervisors to
ensure broader understanding of methods. Holistic training is
required.
Couple this with the reducing maths skills in undergrads, which
starts at the school level. When my son was going through high
school he was taking the Waterloo maths tests, so he revised by
taking prior tests, and he found that Grade 10 tests in 1986 were
Grade 11 tests in 1996.
And as this is an SEG discussion group, I also think all of these
large organizations, SEG, AGU, EGU, EAGE, etc. etc., need to
change and not be so siloed.
Certainly a forum in Denver on the future of geophysics would be
excellent - try to get AGU involved as a joint forum.
Best regards, and Stay Safe everyone!
Alan
On 2020-11-13 11:19, Sarah G. R. Devriese via SEGMIN wrote:
The SEG president-elect Anna Shaughnessy had the slide below in
her talk about careers in geophysics, which she gave earlier this
month. She said that there is about a 5% job growth in the
geosciences, but that the largest growth will be in the
environmental section. This also states that about 30% of the
workforce will retire in the next decade! Perhaps this is the
cohort that they've been saying will retire when I was in
undergrad 10 years ago. =)
The LTE article does say though that the oil&gas industry
workforce - /including geophysics experts/ - will be reduced by
half between the last downturn and 2021. I didn't interpret that
as 50% of geophysicists will lose/have lost their job.
Either way, somber article to read in an already somber year. The
SEG Annual Meeting is set for Denver next year and the SEGMIN
exec (Glenn, myself, and Jiajia) are already thinking about how
to make it a meaningful meeting. If you have comments or ideas,
please fire them our way!
Sarah
Anna2.png
--
Sarah Devriese, PhD, P.Geo.
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
_linkedin.com/in/sarahdevriese
<http://linkedin.com/in/sarahdevriese>_
On Fri, Nov 13, 2020 at 8:03 AM Ed Cunion via SEGMIN
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Glen,
Who disagrees with that? Not this SEG member.
Cheers,
Ed
On Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 8:48 AM Glenn Chubak via SEGMIN
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
wrote:
Thanks Ken. A sobering note to be sure. It is good to
remember that the SEG has provided one of the better (in
my opinion) venues for presenting and discussing
exploration geophysics in North America. They certainly
need the support of the mining community and we’ve
certainly benefitted from the organization.
Glenn Chubak
*From:* SEGMIN <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> *On Behalf Of
*Ken Witherly via SEGMIN
*Sent:* Friday, November 13, 2020 8:57 AM
*To:* [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
*Cc:* Ken Witherly <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
*Subject:* [SEGMIN] The compass swings...
CAUTION:Sender is not from diasgeo.com <http://diasgeo.com>
Dear Colleagues
The president of the SEG authored the President’s Page
for the November issue of Leading Edge. While he tries to
be upbeat and ‘rally the troops’ as it were, the core
message is quite somber; in the oil industry alone, the
expectation is that close to 50% of the geoscientists
employed will loose their employment by next year. This
is a combination of two severe hits to the industry; the
first in 2014-15 and the second the result of effects of
C-19 and a production war last year and early this year
between Saudi Arabia and Russia. As the President states,
this time around, the industry took immediate and drastic
action to reduce costs over the next 3-5 years, the sort
of minimum time period companies feel is required to see
some serious demand/price stabilization.
This will make it very hard for the SEG to go forward
without major changes and the President states this. He
has indicated he plans to communicate to this issue over
the next several months.
Clearly this will depress the support oil companies
provide to universities and students and new hires will
become increasingly rare, with companies most likely be
allocating their previous HR dollars to those with
specially skills most likely to be found with mid-career
people. Contracting these positions to a service group
like Haliburton or Schlumberger might well be considered
to best approach.
So what does this matter to minerals? If the
professional societies we make use of and the
universities we draw students from feel these cold
economic winds, so too will the minerals industry be
affected. Applied geoscience schools around the world can
very seldom survive with a minerals focus alone. My own
adopted home town Denver has the Colorado School of Mines
next door in Golden. This school has for years supported
a vibrant geophysics department with a dual focus on
energy and minerals. Remove or severely dimmish one
component would make the sustainability of the other very
difficult.
I look forward to what the SEG President has to suggest
in the coming months. In the meantime, I like many of you
will have gotten your request to renew membership
notices. While we might look around and think we are all
members, a quick survey I did of the 44 people listed as
members of the SEG Mining Committee before the last AGM
showed about _30% of the people listed as being a member
of the Committee were not registered as SEG members. _The
SEG now more than ever needs our support, both for the
funds we provide but maybe more importantly, to be part
of a show of hands and say ‘I think this activity is
important and I want to help’.
Best/Ken
*The Greatest Obstacle to Discovery Is Not*
*Ignorance—It Is the Illusion of Knowledge*
**
Condor Consulting, Inc
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Lakewood CO 80215 USA
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Alan G. Jones, P.Geo., MRIA, Fellow AGU
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University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
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/ExploreGeo/
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