Blasting off to a Biofueled New Year (Lunar)

Chinese Lunar New Years
Wahoo!!!! Its the year of the RAT!!!!!!! Anyways, thought I would pass along a wish of happy New Years to all of you that celebrated:-) The Around the World For Free man Alex Boylan was in Vietnam and partied hard and I wish I could have joined him. Alex will be making his way back to the United States this coming week, so if you know anyone on the west coast that would like to help him out check out the site! (http://www.atwff.com/)

Shuttle Launch
The space shuttle Atlantis blasted off today for the International Space Station with a 2 billion dollar science lab. Atlantis has been delayed for 2 months due to some faulty fuel gauges. Does anybody know if they ever got that annoying "Check Engine" light to go off?

I watched it live today and even though it does not get much press unless something is wrong, it was still amazing to watch. When they start dropping the fuel right before ignition and then it lights....truely awesome! I hope everything goes well and that shiny new space station lab works like a charm!

BioFuel Bummer
Some disappointing, but not really surprising, news coming out of the biofuel world today. It appears that when the "costs" of creating biofuel are taking into consideration, biofuels actually create more greenhouse gas than conventional fuels. Why does this happen? When you take in the effects of land use change into account the carbon output increases dramatically.

In many tropical nations rainforests are being harvested to either 1.) grow biofuels (palm oil) or 2.) grow grains that have been phased out in other parts of the world (soybeans in Brazil). The whole biofuel initiative is still missing the boat. We cannot assume that biofuels will be able to replace all current traditional fuels to maintain our current transportation/consumption habits AND lower our greenhouse gas emissions. Hopefully we will learn (including myself) to curb our driving habits and use our own means of transportation (i.e. our feet) more and at the same time trim our belt lines. I think I need to run, I mean drive, to go get me some ice cream...cheers! :-)