$25 Million

Richard Branson, the Virgin billionaire, is launching a competition. This time it doesn't involve a really lame reality television show...

"How the contest works: Entries will be evaluated by Branson and Gore, as well as NASA climate scientist James Hansen; James Lovelock, who devised the Gaia theory of Earth's ecosystems; British environmentalist Sir Crispin Tickell; and Australian paleontologist Tim Flannery.

The winner will have to come up with a way of removing one billion tons of carbon gases a year from the atmosphere for 10 years — with $5 million of the prize being paid at the start and the remaining $20 million at the end.

If no winner is identified after five years the judges can decide to extend the contest.

“This is the world’s first deliberate attempt at planetary engineering,” Flannery said via videolink from Sydney. “We are at the last moment. Once we reach the tipping point it will have been taken out of our hands."

Read more here.

If the winner found out about the contest from this blog, could they throw a few bucks my way? At the very least, could they visit one of the sponsor pages?