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The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

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Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#141

Post by jacobolus »

holgerschurig wrote: post #125
exabrial wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's my thoughts as well. The answer is literally in the article: > Mercator useful for sailing This is the only correct answer, and everything else is unscientific nonsense. It hasn't been replaced because... it just hasn't. Mercator + knots + nautical miles is a system that is extremely useful for navigation. Since we aren't sailing ships around a whole lot anymore, a lot of teachers forget to mention the r…

> Mercator useful for sailing+ It is also used by the military (or at least NATO). They use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Transverse_Mercator_... While most of that system is a way to tag coordinates that are "simpler" than just latitude and longitude to a position, it's underlying system is also the Mercator projection. And some properties of Mercator, e.g. that it is angle-correct. So you can use UTM e.g.…

The transverse Mercator projection is completely different than what people are complaining about. The UTM system is roughly what you get if you only take a narrow band of the ordinary Mercator projection near the equator, but turn the globe 90°, and use the projection for a narrow strip of a specific longitude, with a different projection for each strip, overlapping at the seams.

It was adopted by the US military between WWI and WWII, and similar projections were adopted by other militaries around the same time, because earlier (non-conformal) map projections led to dramatic errors when they were used for artillery targeting.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#142

Post by riffraff »

xyzelement wrote: post #73

As the article says, all protections have some distortions and it's just a matter of which ones you chose. It's totally reasonable and rational for the African association of cartographer to push for this change - it makes their continent look bigger. At the margin, their children can look at the map and feel more significant. On the flip side, this particular map makes Europe look smaller. So it means that at the ma…

I think the ones who got diminished did it for both idealistic and PR reasons.

I mean, if you're France or the UK, you want to keep good relationships with Africa, and probably do feel some minor guilt about colonialism. This is a vote that costs you little, so it's reasonable you'd side with it.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#143

Post by c048 »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #129

I never had the impression that the Mercator projection, or indeed any particular world map projection out of the dozens in common use, had any kind of official status that needed to be removed. It seems obvious to me that different map projections have different tradeoffs, and that any particular publisher of a world map can and does use whichever one makes sense for the information they're trying to convey.

This was also exactly what I was taught in school when I was 10 years old. We also saw examples of other maps from other parts in the world that put their location front and center.

That this map is a derivative of "a decolonization map", should be clear to anyone that this is just political posturing and not anything of actual use.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#144

Post by akie »

xyzelement wrote: post #73

As the article says, all protections have some distortions and it's just a matter of which ones you chose. It's totally reasonable and rational for the African association of cartographer to push for this change - it makes their continent look bigger. At the margin, their children can look at the map and feel more significant. On the flip side, this particular map makes Europe look smaller. So it means that at the ma…

Why would anyone object to reducing their inflated size to normal size if it means artificially shrunk continents can be seen at their true size?

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#145

Post by akie »

bawolff wrote: post #81
tensor wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one needs a compromise. The world (except the US) agreed to use this new map together. It's not a conflict.

UNGA votes are non binding symbolic grandstanding. This vote does not mean the world agreed to it. its more like the world agreed to think about it. Will countries actually change their map projections? That has yet to be seen. Maybe they will, maybe they won't That has yet to be seen.

The whole world thought about it and everyone except the US said “good idea!”

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#146

Post by pipes »

petermcneeley wrote: post #116

Ya people have no idea how big Africa truly is Here is the UK in Africa: https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTAyODQ3Nzg.NTkyNDI2Nw*... Note of course this includes Scotland! The traditional English are basically a dot.

And northern Ireland

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#147

Post by ks2048 »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #65
decimalenough wrote: post #38

It's kind of funny how the colonial convenience of having the 0 longitude line pass through Greenwich, UK ends up making Africa the most prominent place on the world map, since the centerpoint (0,0) is just off the African coast. This was true with Mercator as well, but Equal Earth emphasizes just how huge the African continent actually is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_meridians The Washington meridians are four meridians that were used as prime meridians in the United States which pass through Washington, D.C.

Sounds like a decent name for a sports team - should have used that instead of Commanders.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#148

Post by skew-aberration »

riffraff wrote: post #139
skew-aberration wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get why people say this / focus on Africa in this conversation. I've never thought Africa was small and was taught about the Berlin Conference, etc in school. All the large continents are near the equator and hence the relative size of Africa, Australia, North/South America, Asia is not affected much by the projection. Antarctica is big too, even though wildly exaggerated by Mercator. If anything, it makes mo…

North America is very affected, Mercator makes it look as big or bigger than Africa when it's actually quite smaller.

Continents are in truesizeof btw. Asia is much bigger than Africa, North America is only a little smaller. When you account for the Sahara Desert of course, there is more usable land in North America.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#149

Post by jacobolus »

jacobolus wrote: post #141
holgerschurig wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mercator useful for sailing+ It is also used by the military (or at least NATO). They use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Transverse_Mercator_... While most of that system is a way to tag coordinates that are "simpler" than just latitude and longitude to a position, it's underlying system is also the Mercator projection. And some properties of Mercator, e.g. that it is angle-correct. So you can use UTM e.g.…

The transverse Mercator projection is completely different than what people are complaining about. The UTM system is roughly what you get if you only take a narrow band of the ordinary Mercator projection near the equator, but turn the globe 90°, and use the projection for a narrow strip of a specific longitude, with a different projection for each strip, overlapping at the seams. It was adopted by the US military be…

Maybe to be more precise, conformal projections like the transverse Mercator projection and the conformal conic projection were adopted by militaries after WWI, and the UTM system per se was created during WWII.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#150

Post by LittleShaman »

xyzelement wrote: post #73

As the article says, all protections have some distortions and it's just a matter of which ones you chose. It's totally reasonable and rational for the African association of cartographer to push for this change - it makes their continent look bigger. At the margin, their children can look at the map and feel more significant. On the flip side, this particular map makes Europe look smaller. So it means that at the ma…

Its an equal area projection which means it preserves relative area.

Both kids in Europe and Africa will actually end up with a more correct idea of how large both their continents are.

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