That temperature should be just fine for Cooksey's bugs. Bayless hopes to have a full-scale demonstration project running in about four years. If it works as he expects, we could have cleaner skies in the years ahead, allowing the nation, and the world, to ease the burden we have placed on the planet. If it fails, some scientists believe the only alternative is to figure out some way to pump all that carbon dioxide into the ocean, a significant problem since about 70 percent of the nation's power plants are inland. We have no idea what the consequences of injecting CO2 into the ocean would be.
Many scientists are violently opposed to it.
So let's hear a rousing cheer for green slime. Maybe those little bugs can do it for us. A former science writer for the Los Angeles Times , he now lives in Juneau, Alaska. The Web Copyright 2001 ABC News Internet Ventures.