Tsukumi Dolphin Island, a Sea World-type park in Japan, employs an otter named Kotsumekawauso to fetch patrons juice from a vending machine. You have to pay for the juice, but the adorable squeaking is a free service.

Obviously animals have their own dignity and should not merely be employed to carry our juice for us, but on the other hand, I'm not sure juice that hasn't been touched by an otter is ever going to taste good again.

Filed under: Food, Living

Get ready for a swath of marine sterility the likes of which Gulf fishermen have never seen.

NOAA warned Tuesday that a dead zone the size of New Jersey could break records this summer in the Gulf of Mexico. Heavy rainfalls are washing a stew of pollutants and nutrients into the Gulf, feeding outbreaks of algae that will rob the waters of oxygen as they die and decompose. In these oxygen-deprived waters, marine life either flee or die.

The Gulf dead zone is caused every summer by fertilizer and animal waste running off from farms, including those along the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Sewage and other sources of nutrient-loaded pollution, such as lawn fertilizers, also play a role. From a NOAA press release:

NOAA-supported modelers … are forecasting that this year’s Gulf of Mexico hypoxic “dead” zone will be between 7,286 and 8,561 square miles which could place it among the ten largest recorded. That would range from an area the size of Connecticut, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia combined on the low end to the New Jersey on the upper end. The high estimate would exceed the largest ever reported 8,481 square miles in 2002.

The agency said that the size of the dead zone (which includes marine areas afflicted by zero oxygen and low oxygen) could be reduced by a large storm or hurricane, which would help churn up the water. But even that would not be nearly enough to keep it within the 1,950-square-mile goal set by the Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Watershed Nutrient Task Force, a coalition of federal, state and tribal agencies. The aim is to reach that goal by 2015. From the University of Michigan:

"The size of the Gulf dead zone goes up and down depending on that particular year's weather patterns. But the bottom line is that we will never reach the action plan's goal of 1,950 square miles until more serious actions are taken to reduce the loss of Midwest fertilizers to the Mississippi River system, regardless of the weather," said U-M aquatic ecologist Donald Scavia.

The news Tuesday was not all doom and gloom, however. The researchers foresee a smaller than average dead zone this summer in Chesapeake Bay. That's because fewer nutrients are flowing into the estuary than in years past. Again from NOAA:

For the Chesapeake Bay, USGS estimates 36,600 metric tons of nutrients entered the estuary from the Susquehanna and Potomac rivers between January and May, which is 30 percent below the average loads estimated from 1990 to 2013.

Filed under: Food

Well THIS is creepy and insidious. Processed crap peddlers McDonald’s, Kraft, and Dominos have realized eaters interpret perfect-looking food as artificial (you mean meat doesn't naturally come packaged like Post-Its?), whereas slightly flawed or asymmetrical food reads as artisan and authentic. So what are they doing? Working harder to make their shitty food look like your scrappy neighborhood café made it:

When stretching out the dough for its premium "Artisan Pizzas," Domino's workers are instructed not to worry about making the rectangles too perfect: The pies are supposed to have a more rustic look.

At McDonald's, the egg whites for the new breakfast sandwich called the Egg White Delight McMuffin have a loose shape rather than the round discs used in the original Egg McMuffin.

And Kraft Foods took more than two years to develop a process to make the thick, uneven slabs of turkey in its Carving Board line look like leftovers from a homemade meal rather than the cookie-cutter ovals typical of most lunchmeat.

And no, the food giants aren’t merely trying to get on board with a new culinary trend; they’re effing with your perception to try to make you forget their food is so unnatural. At least that’s what public health lawyer and author Michele Simon told the Associated Press:

They can't change the fact that they're making processed products so they have to use these other tricks to pretend.

Not exactly surprising, but scary nonetheless. SHUDDER.

Filed under: Food

Woody Harrelson could put the crunchiest Grist staff member to shame. The Academy Award nominated actor lives off the grid in a solar-powered, organic farming community in Hawaii. He’s been a vegan for 26 years and eats a mostly raw diet. Scratch dairy or meat cravings. He just craves cooked food.

Harrelson, who calls himself a “lover of the forest,” first became involved in environmental causes back when he was playing the part of a bartender on _Cheers_. In '92, a bipartisan bill in Congress aimed to make millions of acres of virgin Montana wilderness available to logging companies. Harrelson joined forces with a coalition of environmentalists, including Peter Bahouth of Greenpeace, that was pressuring lawmakers and pushing to weaken the legislation. While the bill ultimately failed, it got him thinking, “Geez, even if you do stop the deforestation here or there, the timber industry just goes somewhere else. You really need to change systems.”

For Harrelson, that meant finding a replacement for paper made from wood. And so, in the late '90s, Harrelson started working with Canadian entrepreneur Jeff Golfman to figure out how to make paper without using wood. After 15 years of research and development, the company has a product made from 80 percent wheat straw waste. Today, the company, Prairie Pulp & Paper, is announcing the sale of its Step Forward Paper at Staples stores.

On a sunny Saturday afternoon, Harrelson made brief calls to the media about the announcement. I took the opportunity to ask him about everything BUT paper, but he managed to squeeze in some paper talk anyway. Golfman, Prairie Pulp & Paper's president, joined us for the call. Here's our lightly edited conversation:

Q. YOU RECENTLY SAID THAT YOU’RE AN ANARCHIST. [IN A RECENT INTERVIEW WITH _DETAILS_ MAGAZINE, HARRELSON COMPARED OBAMA TO NIXON, INSPIRING BREITBART NEWS TO WRITE, “WOODY HARRELSON HATES THE GOVERNMENT FAR MORE THAN THE STEREOTYPE OF THE AVERAGE TEA PARTIER WOULD SUGGEST.”] HOW HAS THAT SHIFTED YOUR APPROACH TO ENVIRONMENTAL CAUSES?

A. [laughs] I just kind of jokingly made that statement. But it’s fair to say I’m not a big believer in the forms of government I’ve seen. I don’t mean the style of government. I just mean the governments themselves. I haven’t seen any great examples of leaders. Mandela was a real leader, Vaclav Havel. There have been a few that have led with their heart but it’s pretty rare. A lot of self interest.

Q. AND OBAMA HASN’T DELIVERED ON THE SWEEPING CHANGES HE PROMISED IN '08.

A. I don’t think you can look to governments to change important things like this. This is a paradigm shift. To make this paper from non-wood, if you think about it, every year [timber companies are] cutting down anywhere from 3 to 6 billion trees. Half of that’s going to paper. It’s unsustainable. Right now, we’re using 400 million metric tons of paper worldwide. In 15-20 years, that’s going to double. Paper consumption is actually growing in spite of everyone talking about the paperless office. It’s very important that we shift. The forests are the lungs of the world. I’ve always believed if you breathe, you’re an environmentalist.

Q. I LIKE THAT. SO HOW DO YOUR BELIEFS CLASH OR MESH WITH SELLING THE PAPER AT STAPLES?

A. WOODY: Well, let Jeff respond to that.

JEFF: I think your question is a really fair question. [When I first met Woody,] we determined the only way to change the world was to change it from within, and if we work with everybody -- corporations, governments, individuals, anarchists, environmentalists. If you roll back the clock a number of years ago, Staples wasn’t the green corporation that is today. Now, it’s a leader in the green movement. That’s because people like Woody and other environmentalists like myself have asked Staples to start carrying green products.

Q. HOLLYWOOD OFTEN PAYS LIP SERVICE TO CAUSES, BUT YOU SEEM TO BE WALKING THE WALK WHEN IT COMES TO ENVIRONMENTALISM. DO YOU EVER GET FRUSTRATED BY THE STATUS QUO?

A. I still think there’s a lot of things I need to do before I really feel like I’m walking the walk. I’m in planes quite a lot. I do things to offset my carbon footprint. Years ago I realized, I can’t even talk about environmental stuff unless I’m really reducing my footprint and really trying to be a good example to myself, to my friends. Now, I think I’m in a pretty good place.

Some people are so busy with just trying to put food on the table, they don’t have time to worry about environmental needs. There are a lot of people in Hollywood who don’t have to worry about putting food on the table. They can take a moment and fight for ecological things that they care about. Again, it’s a luxury to be able to do that sometimes.

In this case, we’re talking about making paper that’s the same price as recycled paper, but the content is 80 percent non-wood. So for people who are interested in it, it’s not like we’re asking them to pay more. Ultimately, our plan within three to five years is to have the first non-wood pulp and paper mill in North America up in Winnipeg, [Manitoba]. The source of that is mostly wheat straw which is in abundance after the farmers have already used it for food and also for the health of the soil. There’s a vast amount that’s left over and available. We could have five mills up there. And it’s going to happen.

Filed under: Article, Business & Technology, Living

In an obvious effort to be more like San Francisco, New York is rolling out a composting program.

We on the West Coast know imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. We don't mind at all! In fact, we're just itching to offer advice.

When I asked Melanie Nutter, director of the San Francisco Department of the Environment, what counsel she would give, she said cities really have to teach people how to compost. "It’s not something you necessarily know how to do, so there has to be education," she said. "And it has to be multilingual."

How do you educate? Robert Reed, spokesperson for San Francisco’s waste management company Recology, says you just have to show people how cool composting really is.

Reed gets really excited about compost, and it’s infectious. “When people start to understand all the benefits they literally say, ‘From now on I’m always going to use that green bin. Why didn’t anyone tell me this before?’” Reed said.

“We're keeping 600 tons of organic material out of landfills every day, which means it’s not rotting there and producing greenhouse gases. And instead it’s going to local farms and improving yields, and fostering microbes in the soil, which means the soil gets softer and absorbs more rainfall -- it becomes a sponge -- which means the farmer doesn't have to use as much groundwater, so they are using less power to run their pumps. And then, the food comes back to the city in the form of more delicious, healthier crops. By composting you are making yourself healthier, your city healthier, and the earth healthier.”

Let’s break down that pitch:

* LESS GARBAGE: The less waste we produce, the less land turns into dumps. New York is expecting to divert 1.2 million tons of food waste, which means it should save a lot of money on landfill fees -- on the order of $100 million. For this reason garbage collectors like Waste Management have sometimes fought government composting regulations. * GREENHOUSE GASES: Rotting food produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Many landfills have begun capturing methane and burning it for energy, but they don’t get all of it. Composting, of course, produces methane too, but there are a couple ways of dealing with it. You can run the waste through a digester and pipe off the gasses for fuel, then use the solids as fertilizer. Or you can use a secondary set of microbes to break down the methane, which is what happens with the bulk of the waste in the San Francisco Bay Area. The emissions pass through mounds of almond wood chips, which is full of germs that eat the gaseous organic compounds.

* FERTILIZER FOR FARMS: Farms using compost need less industrial fertilizer, which reduces their carbon footprint, and -- if they grow cover crops -- they sequester more carbon. * ENRICHING THE SOIL: Soil amended with compost can be less compacted, and more likely to sponge up water, preventing erosion. There’s some evidence that good soil ecology can discourage soil diseases and make micronutrients more available to plants. * BETTER FOOD: Provide the fertilizer that organic farmers need and you are a lot more likely to have access to delicious food. * UNFORESEEN BENEFITS: Recology found that once composting became the norm in San Francisco they could recover a lot more recyclable material from the trash because it wasn’t covered in gooey, week-old hamburger meat. There are naysayers, of course, who say that New York will never be like San Francisco. Composting is just too much work, they say, and all the food waste will encourage vermin.

But vermin are a function of food in the trash, not a function of composting. Rats and roaches don’t care if their lunch arrives in a green bin or a black one. And the Environmental Protection Agency’s Jared Blumenthal told the _Washington Post_ it’s only a matter of time before composting is everywhere: “[N]ow everyone from Massachusetts to Minnesota has programs starting up, and pretty soon there will be a critical mass.”

So the question isn't: Will New York imitate the West? The real question is: How long will it take for them to catch up?

Filed under: Business & Technology, Cities, Food

"If you have ants in your house," the great Harvard ecologist EO Wilson once said, "be kind to them." Keep this in mind the next time you want to flick one off the kitchen table: The tiny critters, which collectively weigh about as much as all of humanity, could wield a big weapon in the fight against climate change.

In the U.S., corn-based ethanol is a big business, consuming 40 percent of the domestic corn crop and providing roughly 10 percent of the fuel supply, which would otherwise be dirty fossil fuels. But the practice of topping your tank off with corn is fraught with problems: Some argue that the crop should be used for food; it's sensitive to drought; and the ethanol-making process might be contributing to an _E. coli_ epidemic, to name a few. That's why the Obama administration recently announced a plan to invest $2 billion in organic fuels that rely on things other than corn, including switchgrass and gas from cattle poo.

But this weekend, a group of scientists discovered a chemical key that could revitalize corn-based ethanol by allowing it to be made from stalks, leaves, and other bits beside the cob itself. This won't help much with the drought problem (less corn is still less corn), but it could alleviate the food-vs.-fuel debate and the _E. coli_ problem as more kernels are saved to go straight to livestock. Turns out, the savior of ethanol could be the South American leafcutter ant.

Leafcutter ants make some of the largest underground colonies in the world, some with as many as 7 million residents. And, as the name suggests, many of them spend their days combing the rainforest for bits of leaves, gathering half the weight of a cow per colony every year. They carry this mass back into their tunnels and use it as fertilizer for a crop of fungus, which they then eat. Ant experts ("myrmecologists," if you care to know) have long believed that the fungus acts as a kind of external stomach for the ants, breaking down sugars in the leaves that the ants aren't equipped to handle themselves. In fact, it's not the fungus itself that breaks down the leaves, but chemical enzymes within it, and Frank Aylward, a microbiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says those same enzymes could be used to help break down corn byproducts to make fuel.

In a new study, Aylward sequenced the genome of the leafcutter ant's symbiotic fungus, and identified for the first time the exact enzymes that have evolved over millennia to efficiently break down plant material stored in the ant's underground tunnels.

For making fuel, Aylward asks, "why don't we use the rest of the corn plant? It's because the sugars are tied up in cellulose and other things that are hard to break down. So we're looking for enzymes that can help." Enzymes are already used for this purpose, and a crop of businesses have sprung up in the biofuel boom to manufacture them, but Aylward believes his could be among the most efficient ever discovered. And using every part of the corn plant, including parts that typically go to waste, could make ethanol production more sustainable and boost its climate benefits.

To study the ants, Aylward and his team traveled to Panama and Costa Rica to collect specimens ("The trick is to get the queen," he says), then brought them to a lab in Wisconsin where they could take samples of the fungus as the ants cultivated it. While there are many microbes that can break down tough plant matter, he says, the ants do it exceptionally well: Collectively, they're the largest herbivore on the continent.

"We wanted to see if there was something that allowed them to do that so efficiently," he said.

Aylward's findings pinpoint that secret ingredient enzyme, and he says he's already been contacted by private businesses looking to manufacture the enzymes and get an early start on applying them to biofuel production; they could even be mixed and matched with other enzymes to take the ants work even further.

"The ants are really successful at this," he said, "and that's the exact thing we want to do with plant biomass."

_This story was produced__ as part of the Climate Desk collaboration._

Filed under: Article, Climate & Energy

Everywhere I travel as secretary of state – in every meeting, here at home and across the more than 100,000 miles I’ve traveled since I raised my hand and took the oath to serve in this office – I raise the concern of climate change. I do so not because it’s a pet issue or a personal priority, but because it’s critical to the survival of our civilization, and that means it's a critical mission for me as our country’s top diplomat.

Is it also personal to me? Of course it is. The environment has been one of the central causes of my life ever since I entered public life as an activist.

When I was just 26, I attended an Earth Day celebration in Massachusetts in 1970. It was an eye-opening immersion into the power of the grassroots to identify a problem, force it onto the national radar screen, and demand action -- action that would come not from the goodwill and benevolence of Washington, but because citizens demanded it. The explosion of our activism on that very first Earth Day led to the creation of the EPA, the passage of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, and so much more. People demanded action and the politicians followed.

Today, people all over the world are demanding action on climate change, and those of us in positions of authority globally have a responsibility to lead the way toward progress.

So it’s personal, absolutely -- but leading the way is also the right role for the United States.

We are not just the “indispensable nation” -- today we must be the indispensable stewards of our shared planet. What one country does impacts the livelihoods of people elsewhere, and what we all do to address climate change now will largely determine the kind of planet we leave for our children and generations to come. From the far reaches of Antarctica’s Ross Sea to tropical wetlands in Southeast Asia, we have a responsibility to safeguard and sustainably manage our planet’s natural resources.

I am passionate about this, not based on ideology, but based on facts and based on science. It’s not just people all over the world crying out for action -- it’s the very science that is screaming at us.

Twelve of the hottest 13 years on record have occurred since 2000. Glaciers are melting across the globe. Arctic sea ice volume has shrunk by 80 percent since 1979. Extreme weather events are increasing -- like a massive, lethal heat wave in Moscow in 2010, enormous floods in Pakistan that same year that killed nearly 2,000 people and affected 20 million, and two “100-year droughts” in the Amazon in five years that led to the release of billions of tons of CO2, a fifth of all global CO2 emissions from energy in one year alone. In 2012, the United States endured 11 extreme climate- and weather-related events that each caused more than $1 billion in damage.

As I said in Sweden in May, climate change is truly a life-and-death challenge for all of us.

There was no mistaking President Obama’s words in his second inaugural address or in his State of the Union address this year: The United States is committed to meeting this challenge head on, working in cooperation with our partners around the world through ambitious actions to reduce emissions, transform our energy economy, and help the most vulnerable cope with the effects of climate change.

But these are not problems that can be solved by one nation alone. By definition, rescuing the planet's climate is a global challenge that requires a global solution. So we must all demand that the biggest contributors to climate change have the most skin in the game.

That is why, shortly after I arrived at Foggy Bottom, I began working with our special envoy for climate change, Todd Stern, not just to find new ways to elevate the discussion of climate change globally, but to find new ways of cooperating with other countries right now.

Dealing responsibly with the clear and present danger of climate change was the focus of my first trip to China in April. I spoke with President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang about how we can work together to address the threat of climate change and its impact on our two nations' economies and security. People on the streets of Beijing want a healthy climate just as much as people on the streets of Boston do.

I stood with State Councilor Yang Jiechi to announce that we would put our efforts on an accelerated path, making climate change and energy policy a priority at the upcoming U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue.

To confront this challenge head on, we created the U.S.-China Working Group. Our goal is to spur creative, cooperative new ways of addressing the climate challenge -- and in its first few months, this working group has already broken new ground.

When we last met with China’s leaders in California just a couple of weekends ago, after productive and candid dialogue, President Obama and President Xi were able to announce that the United States and China have agreed to work together and with others via the Montreal Protocol to phase down the production and consumption of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), highly potent greenhouse gases used in refrigerators and air-conditioners. This could eliminate nearly two years’ worth of current global greenhouse gas emissions between now and 2050.

And next month, we have another opportunity to make progress when we meet for the Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Washington, where both the United States and China will present new joint initiatives to curb climate change.

Our new climate change working group is an example of how two motivated and committed countries can take strong and swift action to reduce global emissions and put the world on the path to a clean-energy economy.

By keeping the pressure on each other to take ambitious action and replicating this effort around the world, we will create a virtuous cycle to address the climate challenge the right way: together. In a more collaborative environment, I am absolutely confident we will find the solutions and push the curve of discovery. We can do it without jeopardizing our economies -- in fact, we will grow them.

And the United States will be working not just with China, but around the globe. Next I will be traveling to India, where once again climate change and energy will be vital to the conversation.

I hope you will share your thoughts and ideas on new climate initiatives we could undertake. If ever there was an issue that demanded cooperation, public participation, and committed diplomacy, this is it.

In my very first address as secretary of state, I stood before a group of students at the University of Virginia and pledged to them that President Obama and I are committed to marching forward on climate change. But we can’t do it alone. So I also challenged them, as I challenge you, to join us in that effort. For if we waste this opportunity, our failure may be the only thing our generations are remembered for.

Filed under: Climate & Energy, Politics

The latest knockoff to be produced in China is the carbon credit.

On Tuesday, the nation's first carbon-trading program was launched in Shenzhen. Under the small pilot project, 635 companies responsible for 38 percent of the city's carbon pollution began trading emission allowances. The program is scheduled to be expanded to six other areas by next year and then to the whole country before 2020. It will help China meet a national carbon cap that's expected to be imposed by 2016.

China's carbon-trading plans are modeled on similar programs underway in Europe, Australia, California, New England, and other large economies. In fact, carbon trading seems to be catching on with governments everywhere -- except the United States.

Though the Chinese program is starting off small, it's expected to have big ramifications. From Reuters:

While the exchange in the southern city of Shenzhen will not immediately lead to a big cut in China's emissions of climate-changing greenhouse gas, now the world's highest, it does still represent a statement of intent by Beijing, campaigners said.

"This is just a baby step when you look at the total quantity of emissions, but it enables China to establish institutions for carbon controls for the first time," said Li Yan, head of environmental group Greenpeace's climate and energy campaign in China.

This is one Chinese knockoff that environmentalists and indeed the whole world can welcome.

Filed under: Business & Technology, Climate & Energy, Politics

TransCanada swears that once the Keystone XL pipeline is operational, it will be totally safe. The company is apparently so confident -- despite already having had to dig up and replace faulty stretches of the pipeline’s southern leg -- that it doesn’t see the need to invest in state-of-the-art spill-detection technology. TransCanada is like that obnoxious seventh-grade skateboarder too confident in his sick moves to bother with a helmet.

The internal spill detectors TransCanada currently uses -- in which sensors alert remote operators if pressure along the pipeline drops -- are standard for the industry, but they’re designed to catch high-volume spills. _Bloomberg Businessweek_ reports:

Keystone XL would have to be spilling more than 12,000 barrels a day -- or 1.5 percent of its 830,000 barrel capacity -- before its currently planned internal spill-detection systems would trigger an alarm, according to the U.S. State Department, which is reviewing the proposal.

New external technology, on the other hand, can identify much smaller leaks. For example, acoustic sensors can pick up the sound of oil escaping through a pinhole-size opening. And helicopters doing flyovers can be fitted with trash-can-size devices that detect oil vapors in infrared sunlight, potentially spotting leaks flowing at rates of less than 10 barrels per day.

_Bloomberg Businessweek_ calculated that it would cost about $705,000 -- $5,000 per mile -- to install advanced fiber-optic cable technology along 141 critical miles of the pipeline, areas where drinking water, ecosystems, and population centers are at risk. That’s hardly a drop in the bucket compared to the overall $5.3 billion cost of the pipeline. And investing in better spill-detection technology pays off:

Equipment available to spot spills more quickly would have cut 75 percent off the estimated $1.7 billion toll in property damage caused by major incidents on oil lines from 2001 to 2011, consultants said in a December report prepared for the [U.S. Transportation Department].

Though the U.S. EPA recommended these new external detection tools be used on Keystone XL, a TransCanada representative told Bloomberg that they haven’t yet been sufficiently tested on projects the scale of Keystone, and that they produce too many false positives to be reliable. But it’s not like the current system is doing a bang-up job, either:

Internal systems such as the one planned for Keystone XL have a spotty record catching leaks, according to the Transportation Department’s report, prepared by the engineering firm Kiefner & Associates Inc., of Worthington, Ohio. Members of the public reported 23 percent of the 197 oil and liquids pipeline leaks between January 2010 and July 2012, according to the study, compared to 17 percent identified by the pipeline companies.

TransCanada claims to be studying, at the EPA’s request, whether it could implement the new technologies along environmentally sensitive portions of the pipeline.

The company has had its share of safety issues -- record numbers of leaks and a shutdown on the original Keystone pipeline, an explosion of a natural-gas pipeline, accusations that it cuts corners on construction. And a report by researchers at Cornell estimates that we could see 91 major spills over 50 years from Keystone XL. So maybe it couldn’t hurt for TransCanada to spring for some new and improved safety features this time around.

Filed under: Article, Business & Technology, Climate & Energy, Politics

We strongly recommend that you do not use this method to get in touch, as it were, with the Earth. But as this video shows, it is technically possible to run over eight or 10 feet of red-hot lava and emerge with your limbs intact. Someone tell those kids pretending the floor is lava that it's safe to get off the couch!

At _Wired’_s Eruptions blog, geoscientist Erik Klemetti explains why this stunt, while dumb, is not the dumbest possible thing.

Taking a look at the video, the lava flow in question is moving pretty slow and has a dark crust on it. This means it is likely pretty cool -- in fact, it looks like it is a`a lava, which is even more viscous than the pahoehoe many people associate with lava flows. Crust forms quickly on lava flows because there is a high temperature gradient between the lava (at ~1000°C) and the air (~25ºC), so the lava hardens into a semi-flexible crust. Based on where the guys are standing, the lava flow isn't likely very large because the guy who doesn't run up the flow doesn't seem concerned to be standing only a few feet away. The flow itself looks confined to a small channel surrounded by solidified lava. My guess is that this little flow is fairly far from the vent (source).

Now, I’m not sure why he chose this route to get up the ridge (well, beyond showing off), but if that flow has a decent crust (which it does) and is moving fairly slow (which it is), and if you move quickly, your weight isn't going to be enough to cause you to sink into the flow.

But you could still trip and put your hand in the flow, or tread on an area with a thinner crust and go in up to your ankles. It's a stupid, horrible idea. But it might make you a YouTube star for five minutes, and isn't that worth it? (Spoiler: no.)

Filed under: Living