This Is The Cheapest Way To Reverse Climate Change. It Could Also End The World.

Added: 2026-06-04

[00:00:01]In 1991, Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines and it released 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere. And what that did over the next couple of years was scientists noticed that the the average global temperature actually dropped by.3 to.5 degrees C. Is this something that we could do to help mitigate global warming?

[00:00:19]Some people thought a lot about this.

[00:00:21]So, we're going to talk about that and some other fun things here on today's lightning round video.

[00:00:31]Thank you guys so much for joining us today. If you are not familiar with lightning round videos, it's where I take questions from the audience on Patreon who support at a certain level and uh I give kind of quick answers to them. Um I don't do full-on deep dives on this, but if there's a topic that you really want to see a full-on deep dive on, uh let me know down in the comments.

[00:00:49]It could happen. And of course, if you would like to join the Patreon team and maybe sign up at a level that lets you ask a question that I answer, you can just go to patreon.com/anserswithjo.

[00:00:58]So, let's get to the first question. It comes from Ian who asked, "Would dispersion of small particles at low altitude be a viable mediation of rising global temperatures." Ah, yes, geoengineering. We need again. Uh so yeah, this is something that they call geoengineering that has uh a lot of different things under that umbrella, but this specifically is called an SRM or solar uh radiation modification strategy. I talked about this a little bit uh a while back in a video that I did on solar shades. Um solar shades of the idea that we could put something out in say like the L1 point um that could block some of the sun from entering the atmosphere. I talk about the idea of particullet in the atmosphere um just a little bit in that video. Anyway, you can go check it out. That was a really fun video. We got like special animation done and I did a whole deep dive on the numbers and everything. Anyway, it's it's a fun one. You can check that one out. But basically, there's two factors involved with global warming. Um, you have a system, an atmospheric system around planet Earth. Uh, and the two factors are the amount of energy entering the system and the amount of energy that the system can hold. That second one is known as radiative forcing. So the problem that we're seeing right now uh with the climate change and the global warming and everything is basically that we have the same amount of energy coming in but the composition of the atmosphere is changing and allowing it to hold more of that energy. So the amount of energy that's coming in is relatively stable uh with the exception of accounting for like 11 year sun cycles. So most of our u efforts to combat global warming have been to change the composition or at least slow the changing of the composition of the atmosphere so that the radiative forcing isn't quite so much. But this uh strategy aims to prevent the energy from entering the system in the first place or a small amount of it anyway. So talking about how that would work, first of all it's something that would need to go into the stratosphere. Now in your question you mentioned low altitude. Um, I'm not quite sure if that's what you meant by that, but I don't know if the stratosphere counts as low altitude. It doesn't really to me, but uh it would need to be in the stratosphere because if it was in the troposphere, it's way too moist and um that would cause these particulates that we would release into the atmosphere. It would cause them to clump together. Um it would cause them to basically seed raindrops and it would just rain down to the ground basically.

[00:03:10]But if it was up in the stratosphere, the stratosphere is much drier. It's also a lot more stable. um it wouldn't be so turbulent and moved around and causing it to collide and and clump together so much. For example, the Pinatubo eruption that I mentioned earlier, a lot of that ash went into the stratosphere and it managed to stay up there for for 2 or 3 years. So, I did a little bit of looking around to see exactly what you would want to put up into the stratosphere should you want to do this. And there's a few options. The first would be SO2, sulfur dioxide.

[00:03:36]That's a huge uh component of volcanic gas. That's a lot of what went up from Mount Pinatubo. Another one is calsite particles. And calsite particles, according to what I saw anyway, could actually help to rebuild the ozone while it's up there. And what I read calculated it would be need like 2.1 million tons per year uh to go up into the atmosphere. Calite particles would be lighter. They would hang up there quite a bit longer, but eventually this would fall down and you would need to replace it. Another one is calcium carbonate that could go up there, but the problem with that one is it's heavier and it would um come down a lot faster. You would have to replace it a lot more. Now, the problem with any of these three is that eventually they would come back down into the troposphere and rain to the ground, which means that this would be a constant thing you would have to keep putting up there either by launching planes, which of course put a whole lot of CO2 in the atmosphere doing that, which kind of counteracts everything, or by some sort of fake volcano that you're just like constantly pumping this stuff uh at at a high energy level so that it gets up into the stratosphere. And um there's also the problem of once you start doing this, you kind of can't stop because if you were doing this in a way that actually was beneficial, in a way that actually reduced global temperatures, it's something you would have to keep doing because if all that stuff should suddenly come down because you stopped, there's something that could happen called a termination shock.

[00:04:55]A termination shock is basically when something really sudden and drastic happens in the atmosphere and there's just a a shock to the system that causes everything to go really haywire. And it would probably make the global temperature even warmer than it would have been had we not done anything at all. There's actually a paper from the journal Nature um that I'll I'll put down below, but in 2020, they released some new restrictions on fuel in shipping containers or shipping vessels that um took the amount of SO2 out of the atmosphere. And that sudden shock actually did cause excess warming temporarily. So, that's a termination shock. It's something we have to look out for. Also, that's a great band name >> COMING AT YOU THIS SUNDAY. SUNDAY.

[00:05:41]SUNDAY TOOK IN ACCELERATOR featuring Termination Shock.

[00:05:46]>> Hail Satan. But the really the biggest concern with doing something like this is just all the complexities that we don't fully understand. All the downstream effects that we can't possibly predict. Also, it would affect different parts of the world differently. It might stabilize, say, Europe, but it would cause crazy monsoons in Southeast Asia. And the really scary bit when you consider that is that this is something that could be weaponized. And maybe the most concerning thing about it is it's actually pretty cheap. Like this is actually something that could be done by a rogue state or some, you know, billionaire bond villain type. Yeah, it estimated that would cost between 2 and 8 billion to to do this. I don't know if that's per year or what, but yeah, some extraordinarily wealthy person could just decide to do this and uh and cause all kinds of havoc in places around the world. There's not much we could all do about it. There are also questions about how it could affect the ozone layer. I mentioned the calsite particles earlier might actually help the ozone layer. Um but depending on how we do it, you never know. So like would it work is the question. Um if we could afford to pump 20 million tons of particullet into the stratosphere every year um and manage to keep doing it and keep doing it forever maybe. But to me it feels like a temporary fix. It's either a temporary fix or it's something that would just spiral because you can't stop doing it once you start doing it. Um, if we were to do it, it's something we would have to be very, very careful about, which I don't think we would be. All right, next up, we got a question from Rafe Zero Humor Singer, who asked, "If you could bring back an animal from extinction, but only to eat it, what extinct animal would you most like to taste?" Um, easy. Anomala caris.

[00:07:30]100% anomalic caris. I would steam that some Put it in some melted butter.

[00:07:40]I turned that thing into a 1990s Red Lobster commercial.

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[00:08:05]>> Red Lobster for the seafood.

[00:08:09]>> Serious question though. If you go back far enough, could eating something be poisonous? Like could eating another creature be poisonous? We're talking 500 million years back for Anomalicaras.

[00:08:20]Like could the proteins, the animal proteins have evolved so much over 500 million years that our bodies just don't know what to do with it? Because proteins are basically folded amino acids and um depending on how they're folded, they could do various crazy different things. I mean, something that's very beneficial folded a different way could literally kill you.

[00:08:40]Could the folding of proteins over 500 million years have changed so much that our digestive systems would not be able to process and in fact be harmed by proteins from 500 million years ago?

[00:08:52]Like I'm thinking of prons right now.

[00:08:53]Pons are terrifying because they're basically just proteins that are folded the wrong way. It's not like a disease that you catch. It's just your your proteins start folding wrong and then they replicate and then like your your brain eats itself. Terrifying. So, I do know that they found um T-Rex collagen that was somehow preserved from about like 65 million years ago and they did some tests on it and they found that it's really similar to to chicken protein. So, yeah, they say everything tastes like chicken. Apparently, T-Rex actually tasted like chicken and now that we know we know about, you know, birds being sort of descended from dinosaurs, that makes perfect sense.

[00:09:27]Also, there's a risk of parasites, like parasites from that far back, our bodies definitely would not be uh adjusted to.

[00:09:35]It's also not known what kind of like chemicals and toxins that might be in the animal from what they eat. Um, a lot of times, you know, the the the animals that we eat um get toxins from things that they eat that makes it toxic for us to eat. So, I can't imagine what kind of toxins and chemicals they may have had 500 million years ago. More recent animals probably, you know, like if you wanted a bronto burger from the Flintstones, you'd probably be fine. But going all the way back to Anomalicaris gets a little sketchy. I mean, I'd probably be fine with Anomalicaris. It's just uh it's riskier, but so worth it.

[00:10:12]All right, next up, Brian Bezwick asked, "With AI models starting to behave more like reasoning systems than tools, at what point does our definition of intelligence stop being useful, and what should replace it?" I don't know. I think our idea of what computer intelligence means has changed a lot over the last 20 years or so. Um, I'm I'm certainly not qualified to say what should uh be considered computer intelligence at this point or where we will be moving into. I do think it's probably it's time for an overhaul of what it means for a computer to be intelligent. It's just sort of subverted our expectations of what computer intelligence looks like. Like I've been thinking a lot about the touring test lately. Um, like it was always this whole thing like we will know that computers are intelligent when it can fool us into believing that we're talking to another human being. Well, we are well past that. When you have people literally falling in love and becoming obsessed with AI chat bots, we're there.

[00:11:05]But does that mean that computers are intelligent in the way that we think of a person as intelligent? I don't think anybody thinks that we're there yet for that. I mean, there's a handful of people, but most most people don't think that we're there. So, these are two things that used to be coupled that have now decoupled and um and we we don't really know like where like where the lines are anymore. So, I mean, I guess in a sense, Ellen Touring was wrong. He thought that we would know that computers are intelligent when you could communicate with it like a person. And now that we're here, it doesn't feel quite right. We're not really sure like that. That definition doesn't really apply anymore. So, Alan Turing was was wrong. No shade to Alan Turing. He was a genius. He had what he had in front of him, but we're here now and it's a lot squishier than maybe he thought it would be. But there's definitely different types of intelligence. I I I talked about this I think in the last lightning round video that you know a person can be very books smart but not very street smart. Uh a person could be uh emotionally intelligent but not very you know IQ intelligent. And I think computers display a kind of intelligence but not really what we think of as intelligence intelligence. I think where we get tripped up is we we conflate consciousness with intelligence. And I think those are two different things. A lot of times they get kind of used in the same way and they're they're definitely two different things. Yeah, we knew that AI was gonna make things weird and we were right. I don't know what should replace it. It's a good question. Um, but I do I agree with you.

[00:12:32]I think that our our definition of intelligence has uh has changed quite a bit and it's probably time for a new a new refinement of that. All right, next question goes to Cess who I think this might be the first their first uh question here. Thank you. But they ask, "Speed throughout spaceime slows down from your reference point with the speed of our galaxy throughout the universe, sun through our galaxy, and just the insane speed we move while just sitting down. How much slower are our clocks in comparison to someone that isn't moving at all in the fabric of spaceime? And does this contribute to the Fermy paradox at all?" Um, this is a great question and it kind of uh runs parallel to something that I've been thinking about myself lately, which is, you know, you mentioned the idea of somebody standing perfectly still in spaceime, not moving through spacetime at all. Um, is it possible for someone to not be moving at all in spaceime? Like, is there anything in the universe that is literally sitting still in spaceime? Is that even a thing? Is that even possible? I kind of feel like it isn't possible. I mean, maybe if you're like a rock floating in the middle of the bodies void, but you know, even Bod's void is like moving along with, you know, galaxy clusters and stuff because spacetime is being curved by gravity from all directions all the time. Like no matter no matter how far out away from galaxies you might be, you're still part of some bigger structure that's moving through spaceime in some way. Gravity is a hell of a force.

[00:14:00]It's always pulling you somewhere.

[00:14:05]Not to mention gravitational waves.

[00:14:07]There are literally waves of of gravity that move throughout the universe from all directions at all times. I kind of feel like if somehow you were at a dead stop in spaceime, it would almost be like like a boat sitting on top of the water. Like you're not moving relative to the surface of the water, but the energy and the and the waves and the motion underneath are causing the water to bob up and down and and swirl back and forth and everything. So, you're still moving all over the place even though you are static relative to the surface of the water. I kind of feel like that's what spacetime is like. It's just like impossible to not be moving in some way. But back to your question making it about like the Fermy paradox.

[00:14:46]Um, you know, I I imagine there could be like a Star Trek style star date system.

[00:14:52]Um, but that would be super complicated because all the stars that are part of this galactic federation would be moving at different speeds and thus be relativistically uh different from each other. It's not so much a matter of like coordinating clocks cuz all the clocks are running at different speeds. But I don't know. I figure if a if a civilization was at, you know, that level, like the galactic level, that they would they would probably have the technology to fix that. So, I see where you're going with this. I think it's a cool question. I I would just guess that again it I just don't think it's possible to not be moving around in spaceime. I I don't think there is such a thing as a static point in spacetime. Love to hear people's comments about it down below though. Next question is from I love Thorium who said, "What made you want to start making the content you do? And what are some of the things you've done over the years as a creator that you never could have dreamed of doing when you started?" Uh you've done some pretty awesome stuff, Joe Bro. No, no, nobody calls me Joe Bro. Well, I've told the story um a lot of times, but when I first got started, I was really just kind of trying to do comedy. Really, really wasn't thinking of going in a sciency or education direction or a science communicator direction. I really just um I was doing some standup. And at the time, I was working a full-time job, meaning getting up and going to work at 9:00 in the morning, which makes it really tough when open mic nights, uh you know, are during the week. and and sometimes, you know, especially when you're first starting out, you can't get up on stage until 1:00 a.m. and then you're just telling jokes to a whole bunch of comics that have already heard your stuff. And um you know, the YouTube thing was just getting started and um I had done a little bit of YouTube stuff trying to promote the film that I made way back in the day and I just kind of felt like it scratched all the creative itches and I was like, "Hey, I could I could go, you know, be a comic."

[00:16:37]Unfortunately, I think that led me to make, you know, I was trying to be edgy at some points that and I said stuff that I probably shouldn't have. But eventually, I started doing this thing where I was answering people's questions. It was mostly just my friends in the beginning and then one of my buds asked a question about the Firmeny paradox actually, which was the last question I just answered. Uh, and I did a video about the Firmeny paradox and it it blew up and um, yeah, I just kind of kept going that direction and here we are. Luckily, I am a bit of a nerd and I like this stuff. Um, so it's not like totally outside of my interest. Um, my my favorite thing about the job is I get to just go down rabbit holes and explore. Uh, I basically get paid to just nerd out on stuff and that's that's cool. Um, as for like the stuff that I've done that I couldn't have imagined when I first started, um, I don't know.

[00:17:28]I have two answers to that. There's that cheesy phrase that, you know, the the real prize is the friends we made along the way. Um, I have to say I have I've gotten to know some really really really cool people in the YouTube world uh that I don't think I ever would have been able to to meet otherwise. And that's probably the most rewarding thing I would say. I mean, outside of, you know, the the audience and the community that's grown up around the channel. I think they're awesome, too. But there's this thing that I've heard that uh interested people are interesting people that you know it's basically like if you're interested in something that makes you interesting yourself. And that totally bears true for me. Um YouTubers are people who are so interested in a specific topic that they kind of dedicate their lives to talking about it and exploring it and that just makes very interesting people I found. So yeah, I've met some amazing people. I've made some really good friends out of it.

[00:18:23]Um, and friend like really high quality friends, like friends that are just like really good, really smart, really interesting people. And I, uh, I have to put that pretty close to the top. But, um, in terms of like things that I have done, um, I know this sounds really self- serving, but I think it was making the oldest and newest places documentary. Um, I worked on that thing for like three years before we even got to go on the trip. And then we took the trip and then it was a whole year of editing and then once editing was done it was promotion you know it was kind of that it was this it was this project that I was just kind of focused on you know solving the problem of this project and I think only recently now that I've had a little bit of distance from it I'm able to look back and be like that was really cool like I can I can I can sit here now and objectively realize what a unique and amazing experience that was and I treasure it more now I think than I did even a few months ago. Like I think about this a lot like how many people have done what I did like go to the oldest and newest places on planet earth. It really comes down to how many people have been to the Aosta nice up in northern Canada. Like um Kilawea volcanoes National Park is like one of the most visited national parks uh in the United States, maybe in the world.

[00:19:43]Um so a lot of people have been there and not to mention that that was kind of an arbitrary newest place anyway.

[00:19:49]There's Iceland, there's the Philippines, there's Indonesia, there's volcanic places all around the world where magma's coming up and you could stand on the newest rock on planet Earth. So, so there's probably a lot of people that have been to the newest, however you want to classify that rock.

[00:20:03]But the vin diagram of people who have been to those volcanic hotspots and been to the singular, as far as we know, oldest place on planet Earth, I don't think it's that many people.

[00:20:14]Like I genuinely wonder if fewer people have done what I did than have gone to the summit of Mount Everest. You know, now I'm not saying it's the same in terms of like a feat of endurance and all that kind of stuff. Obviously, it is not. But in terms of like a specific unique experience to have, not a lot of people have had it. And that the more I think about it, the more precious that is. And on top of all that, I'm just deeply proud of the project and the documentary that came out of it. Um, I honestly think it might be the greatest thing I've ever done uh film-wise and um and yeah, I'm I'm I'm just super proud that I got to do it and and that it came out well. And I don't know if I can announce this or not, but I I literally found out about this like three hours ago. Um we had submitted to the telly awards and I I found out today that that oldest, newest places on Earth has won five golden tellies. It won a golden telly for uh cinematography, for editing, for uh science and technology, for history, I believe, and for directing. If you combine that with the Scorpius Fest award that we won back in February, that makes six awards that it's won so far. So, super proud. Super proud. And obviously, you can see it over at Nebula if you want to go check it out and you haven't seen it yet. I encourage you to do it. I'm clearly psyched about it. All right, we got one more question to get to, but first let's acknowledge the new Patreon and members with the power of Zoey. Here we go. We got on Patreon Nick Bambiko, Zachary Mali, Jennifer Carter, Pluto, Koney, Elizabeth Smith, Simon Mercer, Leah Grant, Red Cass, and Deiso, Sophia Lynn, Ed Mark, Jeremiah Young, Jan Fatic, Argos Lucian, and Jeremy Schmidt.

[00:21:59]And for members, we got Cake Folsome, Delicate 20, Victoria Bushamp, Jennifer Scaris, uh, Barbara May, Life of Guy, Stone XZ4, D-Dubs, Toaster Toast, uh, Anna Miles, Michelle Buil, Ara Magnus Trum, Tria, Monica K, Paul Shawat, Sasha here, YTC, Just a Guy, All Wed O, and Andra Carrey. Thank you guys so much for signing up. If you would like to join them and be a part of this amazing community, um you can go to patreon.com/anserswithjo and there you can get access to our Discord server. It's exclusive, very cool group of people in there. You can vote on future videos and all kinds of stuff. Um you can also hit the join button down below for the same thing and you'll get a little uh picture next to your name, make you a little bit special in the comments. All of your support is deeply appreciated. Uh things are kind of wacky in YouTube these days. So the direct support that I get from say things like merch and Patreon, it really does make a difference and I I just can't thank you guys enough. So thanks.

[00:22:53]All right, last up we have Sai who asked, "I recently found out that nuclear plants make superheated steam and then remove the water. Is it still steam without that water? How much water do they remove? How many nines?" Uh I I had to look this up because this will be a shock to all of you. I know. Um I am not a nuclear physicist, but that is an interesting question. If you if water turns to steam and then you take the water out of the steam, what then then what is it? So I had to look it up. So a quick explanation for what they do, they use something called a moisture separator reheater uh to do this. And the reason why they take it out is because you're dealing with such high pressures, uh such high volumes of steam, such high uh velocity of steam pushing against these turbine blades and everything that um if you have the water in there, it's just too heavy, it's corrosive, it's a problem. So yeah, they have to take all the water out of it.

[00:23:51]But saying taking the water out of it is probably not the right way to say it.

[00:23:56]It's helpful to change the words a little bit. They aren't removing the water from the steam. They're removing liquid from the steam. So the liquid that they're removing are tiny droplets of water, even microscopic droplets of water, but they are clumps of thousands, even millions of water molecules, H2O molecules that have bound together and made these water droplets. But what they do is they remove the the heavy clumps of, you know, uh, water molecules, and what leaves behind is just free water molecules, free molecules of H2O floating around in steam. So it is it is just water in pure molecular gas form at that point. And they call this measurement um they call it a dryness fraction and they recommend a dryness fraction of.995.

[00:24:40]So that's almost 39. But uh yeah I didn't know that. I I had never I had never heard that before that uh that they have to do that and I'd never even thought about like what happens when you remove water from steam that it's still steam and it's still water. It's just molecular. But that's what you got to do. That's what you got to do if you're going to nuclear the energy. You know, one place where you'll never lose steam is an ebike. And if you're in the market for an ebike or any kind of bike for that matter, you should check out today's sponsor, Upway. Simply put, Upway is the Carvana of bikes. It's the simple, safe, one-stop solution to buy and sell bikes online. Here's how it works. If you're in the market to buy a new bike, Upway has professionally refurbished bikes from top brands such as Aventon, Specializ, Super 73, and many more at up to 60% off retail prices. Every bike comes with a one-year warranty and a 14-day return policy if you're not satisfied for any reason.

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[00:26:07]To get their special offer, you want to click that link down below or scan the QR code on screen right now. And thanks to Upway for supporting this video. But that's all the questions for today. I want to thank you guys for watching. Um, if you're new to the channel, not familiar with what we do. Lightning round videos are something I do once a month. Once a month, despite what anybody in the comments might say. The rest of the videos I do here, I guess I call them deep dive videos. They're more specific on a on a singular topic. Uh we really take it apart, do the whole thing. Um it's kind of more of my bread and butter, but you can check out those on my channel. There's plenty of them to go choose from. Been doing this for like 12 years, and I think I'm coming up on a thousand videos, like deep dive videos.

[00:26:44]I lost count. But I invite you to go check those out if you're not subscribed. And uh if you enjoy them, I invite you to subscribe. I come back with videos every Monday and sometimes Thursday. As always, if you want uh this shirt, if you're a Gen X nerd that remembers Space Camp, this is one of my favorite shirts that we have in our store. Our store is laughsmarter.com.

[00:27:01]You can find all kinds of fun stuff like this one or any of the other shirts that I wear on the uh on the channel. Lots of cool stuff. Help support the channel.

[00:27:09]You get good stuff. Uh these are very soft shirts, by the way. These are much softer than the ones we used to get, but it's laughsmarter.com. Uh please go check that out. And I think that's it for today. You guys go out there, have an eye opening rest of the week. Please stay safe and I'll see you next Monday.

[00:27:23]Love you guys. Take care.