[GWSG] Perovskite on the way; Trump's great withdrawal; Trump a unique leader?

[Tilley, Al]

1.Perovskite solar cells are 30% more efficient than current cells. That means they will need 30% less land for a solar farm, and that helps make them much cheaper. The role of oil (and commercial methane, though the article does not address that) will dwindle as the new cells become available. https://cleantechnica.com/2026/01/11/no-wonder-oil-execs-are-skittish-they-know-perovskite-solar-cells-are-coming/

2. Trump’s withdrawal of the US from the UNFCCC and IPCC may or may not be legal but is likely to succeed. It may be difficult for the US to get back in. The impact of our withdrawal is uncertain.
Our support and funding will be missed, as will the information we have gathered and submitted, but climate action is far enough along that it may not be crucially impaired. The Carbon Brief has interviewed several experts on the issues. https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-what-trumps-us-exit-from-unfccc-and-ipcc-could-mean-for-climate-action/?utm_source=cbnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2026-01-12&utm_campaign=Daily+Briefing+Oil+firms+cool+on+Venezuela+Australia+s+fossil+roadmap+push+Record+ocean+heat

3. I have asked an historian if she could suggest any leader of any major power (by the standards of their time and place) who was so greedily corrupt, so consistently foolish, and so instinctively belligerent as Donald Trump. No one came to mind, but she is “mulling it over.”
In fact, real competition in any one of his incompetencies is hard to come up with. (Caligula was corrupt, but not particularly greedy; Napolean was belligerent but had other responses in his repertoire; George Bush is foolish, but not so emphatically , indiscreetly, and inexhaustibly and publicly foolish as Trump). I am at a loss to think of anyone who competes with him at all in the trifecta. Do you have any nominations?

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