Are you ready for geo-engineering?

Part 1

There was a provocative headline, in the Science Times section of The New York Times on February 13, 2007, “A Cool $25 Million for a Climate Backup Plan,” above a story by John Tierney. British entrepreneur and Virgin Enterprises founder Richard Branson had just made the cash offer in his Virgin Earth Challenge (VEC) to “…anyone who figures out how to remove a billion tons of carbon dioxide per year from the atmosphere.”

But four years later another New York Times story, “Cash Prize for Environmental Help Goes Unawarded,” told a very…