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The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

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Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#241

Post by skew-aberration »

structwafel wrote: post #169
skew-aberration wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/b35... Figure 10 shows that Africa has more Arable land than North America. And I wouldn't call 29.6 21.3 a little smaller, Africa is 39% bigger than North America.

Downvotes?

Just drag South America or Australia onto Africa and tell me it changed more than a few percent in size. Barely perceptible.

North America is not 21.3 but 24.7e^6 m^3 according to google, so the ratio is 4:3. Asia to Africa is 3:2

Arable in your stats just means cultivated, it isn't a measure of the natural productivity. People in Africa work poorer lands due to necessity.

North America has more non-desert land than Africa and produces 3x as much food. Asia nearly 10x food production. Europe 2x. Antarctica has no non-desert land and Australia has very little. Asia has the most by a long way. This lines up pretty well with each continent's historical economic significance.

Regarding 'small Africa' conspiracy - I have never not been told that Africa is a huge continent. Documentaries, podcasts, TED talks, movies, Top Gear, books, atlases (they all have multiple projections btw), globes, video games. Five weeks in a balloon? I may have consumed well over 100 hours of media romanticizing the vast scale of Africa. Colonialists had no reason to conceal it either - selling big Africa investment (exploitation) opportunities was their business model

This is a Mandela effect moment for me. Or maybe it's an American education thing?

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#242

Post by bentley »

respectattentio wrote: post #236
holgerschurig wrote: post #151

Weird title. Cargography constantly challenged itself. Look at some of the possible projections at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projections They all compromise on something to enhance something else. You simply can't map the surface of a 3d shere (approximation of the earths globe) onto a 2d flat surface. And so we have projections galore. And anyway was (and is) always free to use whatever fits best.

It is insane how the big mistake lasted. After seeing each country before and after side by side on a website, it's insane how big the difference in false sizes of countries compared. Like Greenland vs Africa, come on man!! This must be a joke (and still lasted 457 years).

Do you think the UN was using Mercator before this vote?

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#243

Post by bentley »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #167
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.

I assume the UN is a major publisher of maps, often featuring them on all sorts of pamphlets, websites, and if television is to be believed that backdrop for smoke filled meetings. It makes sense they'd have a default and this would switch it.

What was the UN’s default before?

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#244

Post by WelkinFolk »

flohofwoe wrote: post #184
WelkinFolk wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is a US only thing. Even in India, where I'm from, everyone I've spoken to or know tends to like this change.

Yeah but does the Indian education system actually use Mercator projection on their wall maps and geography learning material? E.g. how much is the average Indian citizen actually confronted with highly distorted map projections in their daily life (unless their professional job is involved with navigating ships of course where Mercator projections makes sense). From my side of the world (Europe), this whole "Mercato…

At least from my own experience, the map used the most throughout school was the Mercator projection.

When I first discovered that Greenland and Canada were not really that big during one of my many wikipedia tours as a kid, I was incredibly disappointed.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#245

Post by tialaramex »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #192

> Mercator is the most-widely used projection (Google Maps uses it, for one), but it was created in 1569 during the age of exploration. It's mostly good for sea navigation. Any straight line drawn on the map represents a constant compass bearing. It's also good for knowing how much daylight you get somewhere or whether someone there is likely to be awake right now.

> It's also good for knowing how much daylight you get somewhere or whether someone there is likely to be awake right now.

The former is correlated with distance from the Equator (and knowledge of the seasons) but surely other than Dymaxion all the maps we care about do have an Equator and North->South ?

The latter is correlated with Longitude, and again other than Dymaxion surely all these maps will be the same in that respect ?

Particularly in practice with Artificial Light humans tend to live by the clock, which is thus dependent on local "time zones" and not strictly East-West position.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#246

Post by bentley »

skew-aberration wrote: post #133
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.

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…

> I don't get why people say this / focus on Africa in this conversation.

Because the resolution specifically talks about the supposed injustice Mercator has perpetrated upon Africa over the centuries, and loudly trumpets that adopting Equal Earth is an act of reparation toward Africa.

“Noting the proclamation by the African Union of 2025 as the year of “Justice for Africans and people of African descent through reparations”, and decision Assembly/AU/Dec.942 (XXXIX), adopted by the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union in February 2026 in Addis Ababa, endorsing the period 2026–2035 as a decade of action dedicated to justice for Africans and people of African descent through reparations,”

“Noting with satisfaction the adoption by the African Union of the Equal Earth cartographic projection, which more accurately represents the sizes of all continents, particularly Africa,”

“Convinced that correcting cartographic distortions of continental sizes constitutes an act of cognitive justice and memorial reparation, understood as promoting accurate geographical knowledge, as well as historical truth, education and awareness-raising, and promotes mutual understanding among peoples,”

“Affirms that cartographic distortions of continental sizes inherited from history have cognitive, educational, cultural, geopolitical and socioeconomic impacts and constitute historical biases, the correction of which will promote recognition, justice and development, particularly with regard to the African continent;”

“Recognizes that the Mercator projection, widely used around the world, particularly distorts, from the perspective of area representation, continental masses located far from the equator, resulting in a proportional shrinkage of Africa and other regions;”

https://docs.un.org/en/A/80/L.104

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#247

Post by gumby »

globular-toast wrote: post #166
gumby wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a while, France had its own prime meridian with 0 degrees passing of course through Paris: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_meridian

It still does. I have one going through my house too. The problem is nobody else knows or cares about those meridians. It's quite fortunate the US didn't invent its own, what with its zeal for being different. We're quite lucky to still have just the one.

Don’t give them ideas!

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#248

Post by respectattentio »

bentley wrote: post #242
respectattentio wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is insane how the big mistake lasted. After seeing each country before and after side by side on a website, it's insane how big the difference in false sizes of countries compared. Like Greenland vs Africa, come on man!! This must be a joke (and still lasted 457 years).

Do you think the UN was using Mercator before this vote?

I don't think so. They usually don't use what has not been agreed on officially.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#249

Post by bentley »

holgerschurig wrote: post #122
alehlopeh wrote: post #105

Calling it Equal Earth was a bad move. The word “equal” has tons of baggage. Why not call it something less incendiary like Actual Earth or something? What ever happened to being pragmatic?

That's such a weird statement. The word "equal" has been used in maths since centuries without any baggage at all. And since a projection (how to project the surface of a sphere onto a flat surface) is a mathematical undertaking it's perfectly fine to think in mathematical terms. I think it is actually you now that tries to impose this load onto the term, not the original name givers of the projection. Also, this "th…

> The word "equal" has been used in maths since centuries without any baggage at all. …

> I think it is actually you now that tries to impose this load onto the term, not the original name givers of the projection.

Certainly “equal” is a perfectly normal word used normally in all sorts of circumstances, including equal‐area map projections. That said, while I wouldn’t call it “baggage,” it’s impossible to separate the Equal Earth projection from the context in which it was created: the previous most notorious equal‐area projection, Gall–Peters, was heavily pushed (both when it was popularized in the 1970s and when it regained a surge of popularity in the 2010s/2020s) by promoting the idea that use of non‐equal‐area projections causes westerners to subconsciously internalize feelings of superiority over the poor oppressed Global South based on the distorted size of their home countries on a map. This idea is, shall we say, controversial and not universally accepted. But if you read the original UN resolution that was voted on, it’s clear that the UN representatives believe it (or say they believe it, anyway).

In that context, it seems absolutely clear that the name “Equal Earth” was a very intentional double entendre by the authors of the projection. I don’t fault the authors for coming up with such a catchy name, but I feel strongly it’s important to push back against the false idea that establishing use of equal‐area projections is some meaningful act of restorative social justice.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#250

Post by amadeuspagel »

tialaramex wrote: post #245
amadeuspagel wrote: post #192

> Mercator is the most-widely used projection (Google Maps uses it, for one), but it was created in 1569 during the age of exploration. It's mostly good for sea navigation. Any straight line drawn on the map represents a constant compass bearing. It's also good for knowing how much daylight you get somewhere or whether someone there is likely to be awake right now.

> It's also good for knowing how much daylight you get somewhere or whether someone there is likely to be awake right now. The former is correlated with distance from the Equator (and knowledge of the seasons) but surely other than Dymaxion all the maps we care about do have an Equator and North->South ? The latter is correlated with Longitude, and again other than Dymaxion surely all these maps will be the same in t…

Humans don't live by the clock. People in Spain and Poland aren't awake at the same time, merely because they live in the same timezone.
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