Former guard dogs, strays in the city of Yekaterinburg have been spotted sporting green coats. Although some locals initially thought it was a prank, the police believe that illegal chemical dumping is responsible for these dogs of a different color. As a result of the startling discovery, the city council has been asked to clean up the toxic area.

It sounds like the color is probably the result of a chemical reaction with the dogs' fur, but it probably doesn't bode well for their overall health and well-being. Still, the folks responsible for the dumpng better hope they don't end up with a pack of canine Toxic Avengers on their hands.

Wild Dogs Turn Green From 'Toxic Waste' [Yahoo! News via Geekologie]

The WWF, in conjunction with the Zoological Society of London and the Global Footprint Network, released The Living Planet Report 2008, which projects humanity’s ecological footprint relative to the Earth’s biocapacity. And, after looking at factors such as deforestation, water consumption, pollution, climate change, and overexploitation of wildlife, the findings are dire:

Our global footprint now exceeds the world’s capacity to regenerate by about 30 per cent. If our demands on the planet continue at the same rate, by the mid-2030s we will need the equivalent of two planets to maintain our lifestyles. And this year’s report captures, for the first time, the impact of our consumption on the Earth’s water resources and our vulnerability to water scarcity in many areas.

But the report isn’t entirely pessimistic. The WWF believes that humanity can alter the path of overconsumption and, by turning toward sustainable practices, close the gap between mankind’s ecological footprint and the Earth’s biocapacity:

The good news is that we have the means to reverse the ecological credit crunch – it is not too late to prevent an irreversible ecological recession setting in. This report identifies the key areas where we need to transform our lifestyles and economies to put us on a more sustainable trajectory.

It’s either that or get on that space colonization thing ASAP.

[World Wildlife Fund via Phenomenica]

Budd says:

The PIMs act a bit like a sponge when hydrogen is around. It's made up of long molecules that can trap hydrogen between them, providing a way of supplying hydrogen on demand.

Imagine a plate of spaghetti - when it's all coiled together there's not much space between the strands. Now imagine a plate of crispy noodles - their rigid twisted shape means there are lots of holes. The polymer is designed to have a rigid backbone, and it has twists and bends built into it. Because of this, lots of gaps and holes are created between molecules - perfect for tucking the hydrogen into.

The holes between the molecules give the polymer a very high surface area - each gram has a surface area equivalent to around three tennis courts. The molecules in the polymer act like sieves, catching smaller molecules like hydrogen in the gaps between them. The holes created in the polymer between molecules are a good fit for hydrogen. Hydrogen molecules stick in these holes and are kept there by weak forces - this means they can be released when they are needed.

Hydrogen is most sticky when it is cooled down to low temperatures. When the hydrogen is needed to power the car, the system would just raise the temperature to free up the hydrogen molecules.

Baton Rouge, which you can see here, glows in the particulate matter of its pollution. Dentalben took this photo. It's the tenth most ozone-ridden city in the U.S.

And it should be no surprise to anyone that Los Angeles is the most polluted with ozone. Here is a beautiful view of LA, showing off the dreamy, weird layer of gunk that hovers in a brown band over the city. Steven Buss took this photo.

Most Polluted Cities [American Lung Association]

The SkySails propulsion system can attach to pretty much any large ship, is computer controlled and deploys and retracts automatically. The company recently completed a major test, criss-crossing the Atlantic in a cargo ship called the MS Beluga using one of their "towing kites." The result: a 20 percent fuel savings. The system is shown in a computer rendering above, and can be seen in actual operation on their test vessel, the MS Beaufort:

An optional computerized system would allow ships to travel along a route optimized for wind power, and the SkySail is safer and more efficient than traditional masted sails, the company claims. Ships equipped with SkySails could put a big dent in the oil consumption and pollution created by the ever-growing container cargo industry. Photos by: SkySails.

MV "Beluga SkySails" successfully completes maiden voyage. [SkySails]

No list of pollution mutants could begin without first paying homage to Hedorah, AKA The Smog Monster (1971). He lands on top of Tokyo's smokestacks and sucks the smoke out to grow bigger, and meaner, and more red-eyed. He literally shits all over the city, big slimy rivers of diarrhea. But he also does nice things, like use his grody powers to prevent us from having to hear one more folk song from a bunch of psychedelically-dressed hippies playing guitar in the middle of a field. Eventually Gojira kills him by grabbing a couple of weird glowing white balls from inside his stinky body. There are also a lot of messages "from the children" in this movie, which was allegedly inspired by letters from Japanese children saying the scariest thing they could imagine was pollution.

One of the greatest filmmakers at work in the U.S. today, John Sayles (director of Lone Star), got his start writing cheesily great pollution monster flick Alligator (1980). The fact that this movie is both funny and politically-minded is entirely due to the accident of Sayles needing some money to fund his indie movies. A pet alligator flushed and released into the sewers of Chicago starts slurping up growth hormones that people are pissing and pooping out into his home. Then he grows into a ginormous, mutant alligator who eats pets . . . and people!

A terrific and fairly obscure entry in the pollution mutant genre is Godmonster of Indian Flats (1973), directed and written by outlaw filmmaker Fredric Hobbs. "Gaseous vapors from an ancient mine" have turned a gentle sheep into a guy dressed in a fucked-up sheep suit, but that hardly matters in this strange sendup of life in a small Western town. As the town's racist mayor tries to prevent a nice black guy from buying real estate in his town of apple-cheeked whiteys, the mutant sheep rampages and tries to make it with a hippie chick. Eventually, there is some serious racist violence that takes the film from happy mutant romp into more sinister territory. Like Alligator, this is good political satire masquerading as a cheesy monster movie, and it will please you by succeeding at being both smart and gooftastic.

The best kind of pollution mutant is a rampaging, pissed-off animal, and that's why Prophecy (1979) is such a terrific flick. Bears who have been eating mercury-saturated fish in the rivers near an industrial factory have turned into massive, yucky bears who basically look like they have been turned inside-out. Rampaging and eating of humans follows, and some of the special effects are actually pretty cool. Directed by John Frankenheimer, who helmed the original (and great) Manchurian Candidate (1962), as well as a whole bunch of pretty good horror/actioners, this flick never spawned the billion cheesy sequels. Instead a supernatural movie with Christopher Walken called THE Prophecy got a bunch of awful sequels instead. That's what you get if you keep dumping mercury in the water, kids: bad sequels from a movie with the same name. It's Mother Earth's way of punishing you.

And no list of this sort would be complete without our generation's return to the pollution beastie: The Host (2007), a terrific scifi-horror-comedy about a giant thing (carp? whale? eel? combo platter?) that comes out of the waters near Seoul after a lameass military dude from the U.S. orders his underling to dump a zillion tons of old formaldehyde in the water. Bad move. Now a very angry combo platter is eating people and looking very much like the coolest special effect ever. When the mutant kidnaps the youngest girl in a family of quirky outcasts, they go on the offensive, tracking down the beastie in its lair to get their little girl back. This is the best mutant monster movie to come out in years, and like many entries in the genre it's well-written and has a social message that anybody who hates pollution can get down with.

According to the study that revealed these dire statistics, a HEPA filter could stop many of the mutations from happening. A release about the study says:

Mice breathing unfiltered, polluted air downwind of a large industrial area [near two steel mills and a major highway in Ontario, Canada] developed 60 percent more mutations in their sperm than mice whose air was cleaned with HEPA filters . . . The report expands on previous research and suggests that the mutations are not due to the animals' mixed genetic background.

AP Photo/Color China Photo

Germ-line mutations, DNA damage, and global hypermethylation in mice exposed to particulate air pollution in an urban/industrial location [PNAS]