who wants 25 mill?

Airline tycoon Richard Branson announced on Friday a $25 million prize for the first person to come up with a way of scrubbing greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere in the battle to beat global warming.

Branson said:

"Man created the problem and therefore man should solve the problem,'' he told a news conference to reveal the Virgin Earth Challenge.

``Unless we can devise a way of removing CO2 (carbon dioxide) from the earth's atmosphere we will lose half of all species on earth, all the coral reefs, 100 million people will be displaced, farmlands will become deserts and rain forests wastelands.''

Branson rejected suggestions that he, as an airline owner, was being hypocritical in announcing the prize.

``I could ground my airline today, but British Airways would simply take its place,'' he said, noting that he was investing heavily in cleaner engines and fuels.

The prize will initially only be open for five years, with ideas assessed by a panel of judges including Branson, Gore and Tickell as well as U.S. climate scientist James Hansen, Briton James Lovelock and Australian environmentalist Tim Flannery.

The winner will have to come up with a way of removing one billion metric 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.

He said 200 metric gigatons of carbon had accumulated in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution, raising concentrations by 100 parts per million. The challenge was to find ways of bringing that back down again.

WOW. 200 gigatons is an absurd amount..

-j.