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The man whose algae could take over the world

If life is really a disaster movie in which humanity is wiped off the face of the earth, J. Craig Venter will probably be the hubristic genius who gets us there. The man sequenced the human genome in like three years, and now he's focused on the genetic possibilities of algae. The goal is to program those little cells to produce biofuels.

Here's his pitch, as told to Scientific American:

Everybody is looking for a naturally occurring alga that is going to be a miracle cell to save the world, and after a century of looking, people still haven’t found it. We hope we’re different. The [genetic] tools give us a new approach to being able to rewrite the genetic code and get cells to do what we want them to do.

Eek! Mutant algae!

New York State legislators get $1.3 million from gas industry

New York State is considering whether and how to move forward with hydrofracking in the state, and by TOTAL COINCIDENCE the natural gas industry has spent $1.3 million -- a fortune in state-level campaign finance -- in donations to the New York legislators who will decide its fate.

According to an analysis by Common Cause New York, most of the money went to candidates for state legislature. Republicans received more than twice as much as Democrats.

Hostess Brands is going bankrupt

Have we, as a country, grown beyond Ding-Dongs? After posting a $341 million net loss last fiscal year, Hostess Brands, maker of iconic grody lunchbox snacks and hyper-bleached sandwich bread, is filing for bankruptcy. 

Critical List: Huge wind farm to rise in Wyoming; doomsday clock ticks forward

The Obama administration is speeding towards approval for a huge wind project, 1,000 turbines strong, in Wyoming.

GOP Senate candidate Linda McMahon cribbed text for her op-ed on Keystone XL from the website of pipeline builder Transcanada.

There's a second tar-sands pipeline, Northern Gateway, and that one faces strong opposition, as well.

Fuel duel: Top three energy conflict hot spots

We're entering a new era in which disputes over vital resources dominate world affairs. These three energy hot spots could spur global conflict.

Cycles and cents: One city sets out to prove that bikes are good for business

Known as a car-addicted city, Long Beach, Calif., creates the nation’s first “bike-friendly” business districts, and it seems to be working.

Top-secret snake!

This newly discovered snake species, named Matilda's Horned Viper after the discoverer's 7-year-old daughter, lives in Tanzania somewhere. Beyond that, who can say? The answer is nobody (except Matilda's dad Tim Davenport, who took the photo above, and maybe a handful of other people from the Wildlife Conservation Society), because the snake lives in an undisclosed location. The viper is so endangered that conservationists are keeping its exact habitat a secret, out of fear that it will attract trophy hunters and exotic animal poachers.

A fork in the road for Slow Food

While the leadership of Slow Food USA has been working to broaden its audience and incorporate more advocacy and food access work, a vocal group of critics inside the movement accuses the group of straying too far from the kitchen.

Obama makes a trip to the EPA

President Obama and the EPA have not had an entirely uncomplicated relationship during his tenure, but in the face of a GOP candidate field that is almost uniformly anti-environment, the president is throwing his lot in with clean air and water regulations. He's making a trip to EPA headquarters this afternoon to thank employees for their work, notably the new mercury standards.

FAA gets confused, tries to ground cranes

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has decided to allow a whooping crane migration to continue, after initially trying to halt it. PLANES, guys. You are in charge of PLANES.

Actually, the FAA was only grounding the cranes as a byproduct of grounding planes -- specifically, the ultralight craft that guide the endangered birds on their migration route. Whooping crane chicks raised in captivity, which many of them are since the birds are so threatened, don't have parents to demonstrate migration to them. So conservationists from Operation Migration have the babies imprint on pilots dressed as birds. Then the chicks follow the ultralights on the 1,200-mile flight.

Evidently the FAA doesn't find this as adorable as I do, because they're now quibbling over whether the pilots are allowed to keep training their flocks of babies.