There is no easy shortcut. There are some people who have kept up with academic research, commercial developments, and trend lines over enough time to filter ou

There is no easy shortcut. There are some people who have kept up with academic research, commercial developments, and trend lines over enough time to filter out short term noise. Some of them blog or write long comments on HN. But unless you are one of those people yourself, you won't be able to tell which writers are trustworthy. You can rapidly filter a lot of noise out of energy news with knowledge of physics and chemistry from 100-level university courses (or equivalent) [1]. But most people never acquired this knowledge and a lot of those who have only retained it long enough to pass tests in school. 10 years later they don't remember the difference between power and energy or why some chemical reactions are exothermic and others endothermic. [1] This knowledge is actually helpful to filter news in general when it makes assertions about the physical world.