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Scientists unveiled on Tuesday what they hope will be one of the world's fastest biofuel vehicles, powered by waste from chocolate factories and made partly from plant fibers. Its makers hope the racer will go 145 mph and give manufacturers ideas about how to build more ecologically friendly vehicles. Makes for an eye catching headline, but I bet the major component of the fuel are the vegetable oils and you could have thrown just about any other type of food waste in there to "flavor" the fuel...

Pictured is a known good use for corn. Food. Corn does not make a good fuel for our vehicles...

Look up "boondoggle" in the dictionary and you'll find an assortment of definitions. Useless or profitless activity; using or expending or consuming thoughtlessly or carelessly; an effort that brings no compensating gain, a waste; mindless dissipation of natural resources. U.S...

Hyundai Motor Company plans to start retail sales of the first LPG-electric hybrid Elantra in July 2009 and promises to be the cheapest of all currently available hybrid vehicles. The Elantra LPI HEV leverages Hyundai's vast knowledge of LPG-fuelled vehicles to develop a hybrid that will be very economical to operate. It promises to be as much as 40 percent cheaper to operate than other competitor models in the marketplace and 50 percent less than a conventional Elantra model powered by a petrol only engine, according to Hyundai...

I gues this is the next flavor of the month in alternative fuels, or at least the source for those alternative fuels. The Orange County (California) Sanitation District plans to turn the inflow of excrement and other waste into hydrogen for vehicles that run on fuel-cell systems. While the waste sits in holding tanks, it produces gases, primarily methane...

On this greenest of green days, I ran across an editorial by Patrick Deneen in the Dallas Morning News that I have to share with you.  Everyone seems to be going green now. It's as if we're celebrating St. Patrick's Day all year round...

Dear Dub, We're out of oil, so what's going to replace it? What will our cars be running on? Charlie Little I bet your nickname is Chicken isn't it?..

It's not often I'll find myself looking forward to a book that's been favorably reviewed by the NY Times, but these are strange days we live in. The rush to ethanol really reeks of snake oil to me and "Gusher of Lies" by Robert Bryce seems to be on the same page. True believers are likely to label him a heretic, but the truth hurts sometimes...

 Step right up and see the next solution to all our energy needs. Etha­nol made out of wood chips, household garbage, grass, and old tires from something called a bioreactor from the labs at Coskata, a startup based in Warrenville, IL. Maybe this turns out to be a big deal, but I'm not holding my breath...

Common sense may be dead, but I'm sure glad the law of unintended consequences is still around to hopefully make people think before they act. According to a new study by the University of Minnesota and the Nature Conservancy, the rush to convert forests and farms once from food crops to biofuel feedstocks is raising rather than reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases. So maybe, just maybe, we ought to slow down from reacting to all the gloom and doom predictions of global warming and take some time to think and study before we act...