Stephen Colbert has officially thrown his hat in the ring for definitely possibly considering a run for president. He's already out-polling Jon Huntsman! So what kind of environmental policy platform could we expect from a President Colbert?

Some chemists came up with a really clever way to observe the intermediate stage of an atmospheric chemical reaction, and then some PR flack got a hold of it and suddenly science has invented a brand-new molecule that will solve all our climate change woes! As usual, things that seem too good to be true probably are.

We here at Grist mock a lot of people. But we don't always manage to mock some sense into them. Which is why we're pretty psyched about the response to Sarah Laskow's feature story revealing that congressional staffers were making deadly wildfires into a fun office pool:

McKie Campbell, the [Senate Energy and Natural Resources] committee’s Republican staff director, said the contest has been stopped.

“It will never happen again,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “It was in no way indicative of disrespect for any of the folks who put their lives on the line to battle the fires.”

In Mozambique, home brewing is big -- not because the country is full of mustachioed, fixie-riding expats from Portlandia, but just because it’s less expensive. So when brewing giant SABMiller wanted to figure out how to sell beer to people who are already making their own, they had to do it on the cheap, reports Marc Gunther at GreenBiz. Using local ingredients and less energy turned out to be key to keeping prices competitive with the corner moonshine still.

The result is Impala, a beer made from cassava, the starchy root endemic to Africa.

We went back and forth on whether this would be relevant to your interests, but it's about the universe and the Earth is in the universe, right? I think that's a non-controversial scientific statement even Rick Santorum would agree with. (Maybe. Does Rick Santorum believe in the galaxy?) Anyway, astronomers have found the exact color the Milky Way galaxy would appear if you were standing outside it, and it turns out it is a color that can only be expressed in poetry.

Anti-nuclear campaigners, why do you dislike nuclear power? Is it because of the risk of massive meltdowns? The unsolved issue of what to do with waste? The lack of realistic evacuation plans? Or is it the influence of a James Bond movie you probably watched at least a couple times as a bored child -- Dr. No? David Phillips, president of the Royal Society of Chemistry, said recently that Dr. No's nuclear-powered island lair helped drive the "entirely negative" view people have of the industry. Yup, that must be it. The world also irrationally hates on lasers, solar power, submarines, …

New York City promises to double the percentage of waste diverted from landfills within the next five years. Increasing shale gas production could squash renewable energy development. The Obama administration released a draft plan for protecting the country's oceans. Scientists are fiddling with photosynthesis in order to make biofuel. The Navy is trying to prevent the release of a report detailing toxic exposures at a Marine camp. To ameliorate climate change, cut methane and soot, not just carbon, a new study says.

The staff at NPR has been responding to the news of Hostess' bankruptcy by getting up to some Twinkie shenanigans. Forget that James O'Keefe stunt, this is NPR's real shame. (But seriously, how do we get in on this action? Call me!) First, Science Desk tried seeing if one would dissolve in Mountain Dew. (Verdict: Not after two hours, but that mouse carcass had a lot longer.) Then the food blog came up with 10 more things to do with Twinkies.  Science Desk also has a whole raft of other experiments they want to perform ("At what temperatures do Twinkies …

Is it getting boring to make fun of Rick Santorum? I don't really care, because frankly the dude is both a menace and an ignoramus and that is comedy gold even if he didn't look like the love child of Ryan Reynolds and a turtle. (Yes, I recycled that joke, but it's TRUE.) It's all very well to talk about frothy mixtures and whatnot, but opportunities to mock Santorum go well beyond his Google problem. Although seriously, does anyone else feel sort of dirty when they type his name, like they should be writing "Sant*rum" or something? Anyway, Treehugger found …

Scientists thought they had found the world's smallest frog just a month ago, when a researcher announced he'd found coin-sized amphibians in New Guinea. But psych! Those weren't the smallest frogs. This is the smallest frog. In fact it's the smallest vertebrate known to man. These guys are so weeny that the scientists who found them couldn't even see them at first: Their high-pitched calls make them sound like crickets, and perhaps explorers have long mistaken them for insects. “It doesn’t sound like a frog at all,” says [researcher Christopher] Austin, who had no idea what was making the call …