Nearly one year ago, Richard Branson, billionaire head of Virgin Airways, announced a prize of $25 million for anyone who could devise an effective way of removing 1 billion tons or more of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere per year for at least a decade.

Since Branson announced his Virgin Earth Challenge, many scientists and inventors have come up with imaginative solutions to the climate crises.

Some suggestions border on the ridiculous, like painting much of the world's surface a reflective white to radiate heat out of the atmosphere. Others are prohibitively expensive, such as implanting giant mirrors in space to reflect sunlight. Paul J. Crutzen, who won the Nobel Prize in 1995 for work on the hole in the ozone layer, suggested creating an artificial haze to block sunlight and reflect it back in space.

As David King and Gabrielle Walker explain in their book; "The Hot Topic," hover, none of these so-called solutions takes carbon out of the atmosphere. "Putting more carbon dioxide in the air creates a more acidic ocean," they point out.

To take carbon out off the atmosphere, Freeman J. Dyson, author and Princeton professor of physics, suggests that we start growing more "carbon-eating trees." He suggests that the biotech industry start experimenting with tree genomes to create new versions that devour carbon at rates higher than natural.

"Carbon-eating trees could convert most of the carbon that they absorb from the atmosphere and other useful chemicals," Dyson explains. "If one-quarter of the world's forests were replanted with carbon-eating varieties of the same species, the forests would be preserved as ecological resources and as habitats for wildlife, and the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be reduced by half in about 50 years."

Following the carbon eating-tree idea is biochar, the process of allowing nature to sequester the atmospheric carbon as plant matter then charring it at high temperatures in the absence of oxygen. Biochar keeps the carbon out of the atmosphere almost indefinitely. The charred pieces can be plowed into farm fields to help soils retain water and build fertility.

Columbia University professor Klaus Lackner has come up with a carbon chimney approach. Lackner turns the chimney idea upside down. He has chimneys sucking up vast quantities of pollution and scrubbing out the carbon with a mineral that would release carbon in a storable stream. An advantage to Lackner's plan is that the chimney could be built near depleted oil fields where carbon could be sequestered underground. A drawback of the chimney approach is that it would need a 1,000-foot-wide opening in the earth to soak up the required amount of carbon dioxide.

An international team based at Carnegie Mellon University took the carbon chimney approach one step further by spraying sodium-hydroxide solution from the towers to trap carbon dioxide. A huge drawback for this approach, and all others involving capturing carbon, is the enormous expense involved.

Father-and-son team Dominic and Alex Michaelis, along with Trevor Cooper-Chadwick, figured out how to harness the change in the ocean's temperature to generate electricity. They would build a network of floating islands similar to oil rigs. Each island would house 25 people and may be connected to form larger colonies.

Marine turbines would harness energy underwater, while floating devices on the edges of the islands would collect wave power. On deck, windmills and focused solar panels capture renewable energy. Each island could produce 250 megawatts of power, but it would take a string of 50,000 islands to meet world energy demand.

While all these ideas are innovative and might help to reduce atmospheric carbon, King and Walker write in "The Hot Topic" they are "like a junkie figuring out new ways of stealing from his children."

Sadly, there is no climate quick fix. The best solution is to stop adding atmospheric carbon now, and begin removing it from the air and oceans. This means using energy more efficiently with better insulation, more efficient vehicles, and investing in solar panels and other renewable energy sources. Couple that with planting more trees, and preserving rain forests and open spaces so that we have natural carbon sinks that can wash carbon from the atmosphere.

"What we need is a near miracle to undo the harm that we have done," says James Lovelock, scientist and Virgin Earth Challenge judge. "We have spent far too long sleepwalking towards extinction."

Shawn Dell Joyce is a sustainable artist and activist living in a green home in the Mid-Hudson region of New York. Contact her by e-mail Shawn@ShawnDellJoyce.com To find out more about Shawn Dell Joyce and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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