The Realist’s Protocol: Why Physics Does Not Negotiate
The difference between political activism and biophysical reality
There is a growing, desperate impulse in the West to ‘force’ the system to change. We see it on the bridges of London and the streets of Berlin: activists gluing themselves to tarmac, demanding that the State use its immense power to arrest the climate crisis.
These groups operate on a hopeful, if tragic, assumption: They believe the machine is holding out on us.
They believe that the State could save us—that it has the technology, the resources, and the capacity to execute a ‘Green Transition’—but simply lacks the political will. Therefore, they reason, if we disrupt enough traffic and shout loud enough, we can force that Will to bend, and the Machine will steer us away from the cliff.
I am not one of these activists. In fact, I believe their strategy is not only futile but actively dangerous.
I am a Realist. And the realist’s burden is to look at the gauges, not the driver.
The Audacity of Physics
My critique of the current political economy is not that it is ‘evil’ or ‘stubborn’. My critique is based on First Principles: Thermodynamics, Geology, and Maths.
When you audit the material inputs required to sustain our current civilisation—let alone transition it to a new energy basis—you do not find a conspiracy of silence. You find a deficit of physics.
As I outlined in The Silver Bullet is Missing, we are effectively trying to print conductivity. We are attempting to solve a geological shortage (silver, copper, high-ERoEI energy) with a financial instrument (credit, subsidies, mandates).
The activist shouts at the driver to turn the wheel. The realist points out that the steering column severed three miles back when we ran out of cheap energy.
Forcing a system that has lost its physical capacity to act does not produce a U-turn. It produces a Cannibalistic State. When a government is mandated to do the impossible (e.g., build a renewable grid without the requisite silver), it does not admit defeat. It turns on its own economy. It seizes assets, suppresses prices, and consumes its own supply chains in a desperate bid to maintain the illusion of control.
To ‘force’ such a system is to invite it to crush you.
The Decoupling: A Protocol for Insurance
If the car has no fuel and no steering, the moral imperative is not to fight for the driver’s seat. The moral imperative is to help the passengers exit the vehicle.
This is why I write. Not to incite revolution—revolutions are merely fights over who gets to captain the sinking ship—but to advocate for Insulation.
We are entering a phase shift where the macro-economy (the ‘Civilisational’ layer) can no longer guarantee the stability of the micro-economy (the ‘Biological’ layer). The grid, the currency, and the just-in-time supply chain are fragile because they are leveraged against a biophysical reality that is calling in its debts.
The Realist’s Protocol is not an act of mutiny. It is an act of insurance.
Build High-Trust Community Networks: This is the primary redundancy. In a low-energy future, complexity cannot be maintained by individuals. The ‘Lone Wolf’ dies; the pack survives. We must move from transaction-based relationships to trust-based obligations.
Restore Functioning Ecosystems: You cannot eat currency. The ultimate substrate of any economy is the soil and water. Restoring local biodiversity and water retention is not ‘gardening’; it is repairing the life-support system that the macro-economy is actively liquidating.
Decouple your survival from the Grid: Not because the grid is ‘political’, but because it is thermodynamically fragile. Energy independence is not a luxury; it is the only way to ensure the lights stay on when the physics deficit comes due.
The Warning from Inside the Walls
History has a name for those who warn that the walls are too thin. We are often called ‘Doomers’ or ‘Radicals’ by the very people we are trying to warn.
But there is nothing radical about reading a fuel gauge. There is nothing ‘destabilising’ about pointing out that exponential growth on a finite planet leads to a Resource Entropy Singularity.
The true radicals are those who insist—against all laws of physics—that we can continue as we are. The true danger is the Systemic Stupidity that suppresses the warning signal until the boiler explodes.
I am not asking you to glue yourself to a bank. I am asking you to protect yourself from the bank’s inevitable maths.
The simulation is ending. The physical world is waiting.
As we all live on the same planet, then the question is, why those with the control have decided to do so little to alleviate the problem? Presumably Black Rock et al are aware of the food needs of populations, otherwise why would the have purchased Ukraine and other food producing countries on the planet. If the problem is so crucial, why were all military carbon emissions removed from any monitoring, (at the Kyoto COP), and bombs whether in dropping or just building are very CO2 intensive. When the west blew-up Nord Stream, (thereby de-industrialising Europe maybe for ever), it produced the largest single CO2 emission ever recorded, EVER. But you know, if you can get a lot of people to spend money and keep failing economies just ticking over ………...well maybe it was worth try, and who knows it might work.
My critique of the current political economy is not that it is ‘evil’ or ‘stubborn’. My critique is based on First Principles: Thermodynamics, Geology, and Maths.
Well, could you actually do that then? For example, in the SETE model, your "S_crit, this is the thermodynamic limit where physical collapse is inevitable. The system cannot physically exist beyond this point, as its total metabolic energy is consumed by its costs." So what are the variable values for your S_crit (the point where) P_maint ≥ Ėₓₘₐₓ for example)? Or what does this have to do with real thermodynamics? Why aren't you explaining it?
In your paper, page 3 point 2.1.1 The Planetary Entropy Budget and Earth’s Energy Imbalance. You describe the planetary entropy budget in some real terms and give some units and variables so you are aware of them, I think?.
Then you go to “Inertial Mass” (M = MM + MI) where MM is tangible capital (ok, you can count that), but MI is a vague cocktail of “ideological myths” and “tech‑solutionism” that has no agreed‑upon unit. It lacks variable values again.
In real thermodynamics and physics with math , our planet’s entropy‑export ceiling is roughly 0.9 W m⁻² K⁻¹, or about 4–6 × 10¹⁴ W K⁻¹ globally, with an uncertainty on the order of ± 10 %.
It seems to me you declare it a boundary condition for a social model that never actually derives its own variables.
Let's call it what it is. Your SETE model is a metaphorical bridge. I would be fine with it if you actually made this distinction clear to your reader. But why go a step further and claim, "My critique is based on first principles: thermodynamics, Geology, and Maths."?
If you think what your model or articles do "is in terms of starting from first principles in the disciplines like physics, thermodynamics, geology, and math, you are deceiving people. Or have no clue what those fields do. Otherwise, you would start from actual first principles (energy conservation, entropy production, Newton’s laws) and derive a quantitative relationship that can be measured. You would define every variable with units and validate the equations, etc.
Page 7 of your paper, point 6,Glossary of Symbols, must be some type of unintended added joke to the whole paper, right?
You can take this as advice and be transparent about what your model is; clearly state it to people and improve it. Be clear it's not in peer review or was waiting for publication as you did earlier (I think you removed it but didn't correct the record). It's now on Zenodo, a repository for preprints that does not conduct peer review.
Because what you are doing now, at best in my opinion, is dressing up a social science narrative in a physics coat and acting like the whole thing is a hard‑numbers theorem
Your other paper, The Path to Singularity. It is for others to criticize more in depth. But let me say this politely: it's at best an essay dressed up in the trappings of a scientific model. And you should not couple it with the SETE model or link it if you want to improve the actual model into something helpful instead of deceptive.
Because that paper, The Path to Singularity, reads like a self-promoting manifesto. It selectively references real literature (Kleidon, Odum, Georgescu‑Roegen) but again, it never integrates that literature into the testable framework.
Your historical myth-tracking (Eden → Enlightenment) is, in my opinion, just selective reading of history that cherry‑picks philosophers (Descartes, Bacon, Horkheimer) to fit a pre‑written storyline.
The three-domain model (M, S I), where you claim to formalize material base, superstructure, and ideology as coupled differential equations, gives no actual equations; the coupling is described in prose only. No data, no simulation, no calibration, nothing.
The whole neoclassical economics = “perpetual‑motion” model that violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics is only true if you force economics into a physics framework that it was never meant to occupy.
I mean, are you serious about that paper? The added addendum made it even worse. So please, while the model could have some value, the other paper is in a whole other category.