I have always found it a bizarre idea that we allegedly judge a country's importance by it's size on a Mercator projection map. Does anyone really think Greenland is the most important place in the world? Europe is tiny, yet the kind of people to complain about it will also complain about the outsized importance of it. Africa, which is apparently a victim of such projectionism, is also placed in the middle because of where the arbitrary Greenwich meridian goes.
thinkingemote · 2h ago
Ironically it's by looking at a globe rather than even a map like this that Greenlands worth becomes more visible. We need to centre the globe on Greenland and see what it tells us.
Greenland has at least two reasons to be worth more then it is now: in the future when the north polar ice sheet melts. The arctic circle becomes a navigable ocean. It's a short way from USA and Europe to Asia (or Russia).
Secondly removing the ice means it's much easier to get the essential hydrocarbons underneath of which there are lots of and which many countries will want.
So the reasons for Greenland is geography, security, control, trade and economy. And by thinking long term. It can also explain some off handed and mocked comments about Canada too.
notahacker · 1h ago
Also notable that in the centuries following Mercator projection, Africa, the Indian subcontinent and the northern parts of South America actually shrunk by the map were regarded as vast, unexplored wildernesses full of resources to plunder (and the northern realms expanded by the projection as inaccessible icy wasteland). Difficult to imagine the Gall-Peters projection making conquistadors and colonists from little European countries more respectful of the inhabitants of the equatorial realms, though I guess they might have got lost more using it...
varenc · 3h ago
In my childhood I definitely thought Greenland was a much physically large place than it is, because of the mercator world map the hung on the wall in home room. Was dumbfounded when I learned it actually fits within the continental US.
thenoblesunfish · 5h ago
Agreed - territorial area is only one measure of importance, and probably not a great one. What would be more useful on a wall, if we are interested in such things, are bubbles with size showing population, GDP, life expectancy, etc. (a la https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$chart-type=bubbles&url=v2 ), arranged to preserve, as much as possible, country positions on the projection of your choosing.
fph · 4h ago
The Greenwich meridian is not actually 100% arbitrary. It is a convenient location that does not split into two any significant landmasses.
mapmeld · 40m ago
I don't think enough people talk about how lucky we are that the International Date Line can roughly follow a line of longitude 180 degrees from the Greenwich meridian. If you were on a planet with more land, or we could only draw it through the Atlantic or Australia, timezones would be a lot weirder.
notahacker · 1h ago
It's mostly a convenient location for a group based at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich to define...
MrJohz · 4h ago
It does split off part of Russia, I believe. The Florence meridian works slightly better for avoiding splitting any landmasses.
As I understand it, it's not the best location, it's just good enough and was very popular for historical reasons.
kitd · 3h ago
Small quibble: the Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey all have "(UK)" appended. They are not actually part of the UK, but British Crown dependencies. Possible confusion (as with most things British and overseas).
sengifluff · 3h ago
I think you may have misunderstood the meaning of the brackets. The key says this means “dependency or area of special sovereignty”.
mkl · 2h ago
The choices of cities, towns, and lakes to display in New Zealand is rather strange. The biggest lakes in the South Island are missing, and Napier, Rotorua, and Nelson are shown while some bigger places aren't.
Is it similar for other countries?
francisdavey · 4h ago
The name of the island I live on (Amami) is misspelled. That does not give me a great deal of confidence about the rest of the map.
Numerous equal-area projections already exist. It's unclear what makes this one better.
PaulRobinson · 4h ago
There is literally a huge and prominent link entitled "Equal Earth Projection" in the middle, at the top, that when clicked take you to a description of what the intent of the projection was:
It was created to provide a visually pleasing alternative to the Gall-Peters projection, which some schools and socially concerned groups have adopted out of concern for fairness. Their priority is to show developing countries in the tropics and developed countries in the north with correctly proportioned sizes.
In addition to being rigorously equal-area throughout, other Equal Earth projection features include:
• An overall shape similar to that of the Robinson projection. (The Robinson, although popular and pleasing to the eye, is not equal-area as is the Equal Earth projection).
• The curved sides of the projection suggest the spherical form of Earth.
• Straight parallels that make it easier to compare how far north or south places are from the equator.
Perhaps that makes it clearer for you.
vitus · 17m ago
> • The curved sides of the projection suggest the spherical form of Earth.
> • Straight parallels that make it easier to compare how far north or south places are from the equator.
Okay, we've now added a constraint that this should be pseudocylindrical [0].
So why pick this over, say, Eckert IV or something from the Tobler Hyperelliptical family?
There is perhaps an additional argument (present on the wiki page [1], and elaborated on the paper introducing the projection [2]) that the equal earth projection is computationally easier to translate between lat/long and map coordinates, as it explicitly uses a polynomial equation instead of strict elliptical arcs. (This is the main argument presented against Eckert IV.)
The paper also lists some additional aesthetic goals: poles do not converge to points (ruling out Tobler Hyperelliptical), and meridians do not bulge excessively.
In fact, the paper describes Equal Area to be a blend of Craster parabolic and Eckert IV (then aesthetically tuned to avoid being stretched too much in either direction). It is also notable that the Equal Area paper measures both lower scale distortion and angular deformation for Eckert IV.
Yes, and there are also already multiple equal-area projections with similar properties, too. For example, the Goode homolosine "orange-peel" projection only loses out by failing to show contiguous oceans (emphasizing land masses instead) and having a discontinuity where two simpler projections are joined. It gives equal-area projection and improving shapes (as compared to fully homolographic projections) while still showing "curved sides [that] suggest the spherical form of Earth" (arguably, far more so). Its parallels are straight, and furthermore they are equidistant in the central latitudes (in which it's based on a sinusoidal projection).
Oh, and it was developed over a century ago, and already in common use when Arno Peters started his activism for the Gall-Peters projection (called this even though Peters made no refinements in independently developing a projection identical to Gall's 1855 work, and even initially mis-described it).
orangeboats · 5h ago
Usually it all boils down to "aesthetics". I am pretty sure most would agree that Gall-Peters is atrocious looking!
No comments yet
Animats · 5h ago
Mandatory XKCD: "What your map projection says about you".[1]
It's not the size of the landmass that counts, anyway. It's how you use it.
r-u-serious · 5h ago
I love the "south at the top" variants! :D
supersrdjan · 1h ago
Living in the northern hemisphere, it bugs me that standard north-up, west-left maps don't match up with the sun and with our clocks. It's neat that both clock hands and the sun are "up" at noon. It would be even neater if that upward direction corresponded to south, since that's where the sun actually is at midday. With south-at-top, east-to-the-left, maps would sync with both our clocks and the sun's daily arc. But then we would lose the west-left rhyme.
andyjohnson0 · 1h ago
As a European the "Oceania - South at Top" looks like some other planet. I like this very much - that there are ways of looking at something so singular and familiar, our shared planet, that make it look new and unfamiliar.
motbus3 · 5h ago
I appreciate they did not misnamed the gulf of Mexico
Greenland has at least two reasons to be worth more then it is now: in the future when the north polar ice sheet melts. The arctic circle becomes a navigable ocean. It's a short way from USA and Europe to Asia (or Russia).
Secondly removing the ice means it's much easier to get the essential hydrocarbons underneath of which there are lots of and which many countries will want.
So the reasons for Greenland is geography, security, control, trade and economy. And by thinking long term. It can also explain some off handed and mocked comments about Canada too.
As I understand it, it's not the best location, it's just good enough and was very popular for historical reasons.
Is it similar for other countries?
So why pick this over, say, Eckert IV or something from the Tobler Hyperelliptical family?
There is perhaps an additional argument (present on the wiki page [1], and elaborated on the paper introducing the projection [2]) that the equal earth projection is computationally easier to translate between lat/long and map coordinates, as it explicitly uses a polynomial equation instead of strict elliptical arcs. (This is the main argument presented against Eckert IV.)
The paper also lists some additional aesthetic goals: poles do not converge to points (ruling out Tobler Hyperelliptical), and meridians do not bulge excessively.
In fact, the paper describes Equal Area to be a blend of Craster parabolic and Eckert IV (then aesthetically tuned to avoid being stretched too much in either direction). It is also notable that the Equal Area paper measures both lower scale distortion and angular deformation for Eckert IV.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_map_projections#pseudo...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Earth_projection
[2] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=doi.org%2F10.1080%2F136...
Oh, and it was developed over a century ago, and already in common use when Arno Peters started his activism for the Gall-Peters projection (called this even though Peters made no refinements in independently developing a projection identical to Gall's 1855 work, and even initially mis-described it).
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[1] https://xkcd.com/977/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVX-PrBRtTY
https://m.xkcd.com/977/