Will we ever leave Earth?

Originally posted by DeepThought
It's not the displays of violence by ISIS that attracts them.

The advertising videos are largely displays of violence (or so I have heard). Clearly Isis believes that displays of violence are at least part of what attracts support.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Countries like China have such population pressure they will maybe be the first to Mars.

China does not have 'population pressure', and would not create colonies for the purpose of getting rid of population. In fact the first colonies by any nation will have nothing whatsoever to do with population pressure.

If overpopulation was a real issue to the point that a country would want to get rid of its own citizens, there are plenty of habitable places on Earth to send them to.

Originally posted by twhitehead
China does not have 'population pressure', and would not create colonies for the purpose of getting rid of population. In fact the first colonies by any nation will have nothing whatsoever to do with population pressure.

If overpopulation was a real issue to the point that a country would want to get rid of its own citizens, there are plenty of habitable places on Earth to send them to.

Even creating "floating cities" on the ocean would be far cheaper and more viable than setting up colonies on Mars. But if ever a country had such dire population issues that it was even contemplating such radical means of accommodating surplus citizens, it would be far more likely that the ultimate solution adopted would be a host of plain old population control measures. Free condoms and birth control pills, tax credits for having fewer children, and so on.

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I'm aware of ISIS's attitude to Shia's, what I meant was that I don't know how Shia's regard Caliphates in general, clearly they're not going to be impressed by that particular caliphate. Is a Shia Caliphate possible?

Originally posted by Soothfast
But if ever a country had such dire population issues that it was even contemplating such radical means of accommodating surplus citizens, it would be far more likely that the ultimate solution adopted would be a host of plain old population control measures. Free condoms and birth control pills, tax credits for having fewer children, and so on.

That has proven to be a dangerous economic strategy. Current population growth in China is driven by the ageing of the population. The ageing of the population is Chinas biggest population issue right now, and it won't be long before they are actually encouraging people to have more children. Reducing birth rates would be effective in Africa, and a few other places.
In a modern society, you want to get rid of your oldest people, not young ones. The problem is, if you develop new colonies, the people most likely to go there are the people you most want to retain. (young professionals/entrepreneurs).

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I think I said China COULD have a 10 million man army. What do you think is wrong about that? With 3 times the population of the USA why do you think that out of the question? Right now they have a standing army of 2.3 million, not far off from my 10. I think it not out of reach they could muster up, shanghai if you will, enough to make a TWENTY million man army if they had to.

Their previous MO in warfare was to overwhelm the enemy with numbers. What makes you think that way of thinking has changed?

With nearly a billion people, they are already straining the resources of their country and are now the largest producers of pollution in the world. Some cities there have air unsafe to even breath, like Los Angeles when I was a child. I was 7 or 8 when I got pneumonia and we lived maybe 10 miles from downtown LA. So we went to Children's hospital in downtown and I remember seeing the air looking down the street as a dirty brownish green color. Thinking at the time, that doesn't look good, especially for a sick kid.

LA has done a lot to clean up their act but the basic cause of smog there in the 40's,50's, and 60's was a huge conspiracy that took decades to uncover, and all the principles were dead and buried by the time the scam was figured out.

It seems LA in the 1930's had a nice efficient mass transit system and had for years, electric trolley cars, overhead wires connecting to the motors to run the things. Power coming from hydroelectric power, the streetcars ran very efficiently and relatively quietly for a long time and cheap transportation also.

Well, Goodyear tire and rubber and a couple other tire companies saw an opportunity for a scam, got together with the Detroit car dudes and the oil companies and started a campaign to cast doubt on the viability of the electric street cars. In the 30's, the air in LA was almost pristine.

So they bribed the local politicians, not hard to do, and had all the electric cars removed, the tracks covered with asphalt and installed diesel powered buses.

The result was disasterous. The air quality shot down the tubes to the point where people were literally getting sick breathing it.

They figured out there was a scam, about 30 odd years later, all the principles dead but they reversed course, got rid of the stupid spewing buses and are reinstalling electric trolley cars or electric busses and with the other air quality measures, LA is a lot cleaner now.

Not perfect by any means but a hundred times better than last century.

So now China is going through the same thing, using coal as the chief fuel and really clogging the air there in some of the major cities.

They are finally cluing into the fact they are screwing up big time and are taking steps to clear the air, like using solar for instance.

My guess is it will take 20 more years to get the quality of air to the present day Los Angeles level.

Originally posted by sonhouse
With nearly a billion people, they are already straining the resources of their country and are now the largest producers of pollution in the world.

And so should they be given that they have the largest population in the world. Per capita, the US is probably many times more polluting despite having a long lead on development.
But this is not really a population issue. China would still be a large polluter even if they halved their population. Its a development issue - one that they are working on and will eventually solve. They already have some of the cleanest coal power stations in the world, but the older, dirty ones are still running.

Originally posted by twhitehead
And so should they be given that they have the largest population in the world. Per capita, the US is probably many times more polluting despite having a long lead on development.
But this is not really a population issue. China would still be a large polluter even if they halved their population. Its a development issue - one that they are working on an ...[text shortened]... e of the cleanest coal power stations in the world, but the older, dirty ones are still running.

If China would be depopulated it's population to a one resembling USA's, then they would be quite low in emission of CO2.

Per capita of USA 2010 is 17.564 to be compared with Chinas 6.195
I would say that USA is one of the bad guys of the world.
Don't point fingers until USA itself take care of the problem.

Originally posted by FabianFnas
If China would be depopulated it's population to a one resembling USA's, then they would be quite low in emission of CO2.

It very much depends on how it gets depopulated. A large proportion of Chinas pollution comes from manufacturing for export, not from population. If manufacturing workers were 'depopulated' then the pollution would be reduced.
If however poor agricultural people were 'depopulated' then there would be almost no change in the pollution levels.

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So from a Shi'ite point of view the ISIS caliphate is automatically illegitimate unless Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi can demonstrate decent from Muhammad.