Vanity Fair: Private E-mails Reveal What Evil Scientists Really Think of the Netflix Show Stranger Things
Given Netflix’s notoriously secret ratings info, we may never know how many people actually watched Stranger Things over the summer. But thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, we do know that members of the Department of Energy were watching -- and, according to a stack of released e-mails, they had a lot to say about the “sinister (yet awesome)” way their organization was portrayed. It’s worth noting that DOE employees, like the rest of us, have spoiler concerns.
Free Beacon journalist Lachlan Markay decided to employ the Freedom of Information Act, which gives U.S. citizens the right to access information from the federal government in order to unearth all mentions of Stranger Things in official DOE emails.
Associated Press: U.N. Agreement Reached on Aircraft Climate-Change Emissions
The United Nations' aviation arm overwhelmingly ratified an agreement Thursday to control global warming emissions from international airline flights, the first international climate-change pact to set limits on a single industry.
The agreement, adopted overwhelmingly by the 191-nation International Civil Aviation Organization at a meeting in Montreal, sets airlines' carbon emissions in the year 2020 as the upper limit of what carriers are allowed to discharge. Airlines that exceed that limit in future years, as most are expected to do, will have to offset their emissions growth by buying carbon credits from other industries.
ABC News: Hurricane Matthew Lashes Florida Amid Dire Warnings, 300,000 Lose Power
Hurricane Matthew battered the Florida coast with powerful winds, potentially devastating storm surges and torrential rain on Friday, leaving hundreds of thousands without power as those remaining in the storm's path were ordered to shelter in place.
The western eye wall of Matthew brushed by Cape Canaveral, home of the Kennedy Space Center, producing wind 115 mpg gusts there at around 5:30 a.m. on Friday.
More than 300,000 people were already without power across the state of Florida.
Guardian: Chief Scientist to Lead Review Into Australia's Energy Security
Australia’s chief scientist, Alan Finkel, will lead an energy security review determining whether the national electricity market can deliver reliable baseload power while meeting Australia’s climate change commitments.
Energy ministers held an emergency meeting on Friday and agreed to hold the independent review, which will deliver its preliminary findings in December.
The communique issued after the meeting says the review will take stock of the current state of the security and reliability of the national electricity market and provide advice to governments on a “coordinated, national reform blueprint."
MIT Technology Review: A Desert Full of Tomatoes, Thanks to Solar Power and Seawater
At first glance, growing fruit in the desert sounds like an awfully good way to feed a mushrooming global population and adapt to the worst effects of climate change. And a farm in South Australia run by the greenhouse developer Sundrop Farms is doing just that, using solar power to desalinate water and grow tomatoes in the otherwise parched landscape.
Farmers Weekly reports that the $150 million facility focuses sunlight from 23,000 mirrors onto a tower to produce energy that drives an attached desalination system. Sucking water from the nearby Spencer Gulf, it produces up to 1 million liters of fresh water every day. The result is tomatoes -- lots of tomatoes.