Sir Richard Branson, dude, you rock!

Sir Richard Branson is now somewhere near the top of the list of people I'd like to meet. Not only does he run an airline that, by all reports, actually gives its passengers enough leg room, and he's started a space tourism company, but now he's offering a $25M prize for technology that absorbs carbon from the atmosphere.

Now, as for the prize, they're looking at removing 1 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere per year. Hmm. Need to run some back-of-the-envelope calculations . . .