Comment by c048
10 hours ago
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.
At least they're not renaming any lakes.
or gulfs. Or states
By now, I am so influenced by Tolkien that I expected "gulves".
No, the Mercator map has been the world map you'd see everywhere by default, and it is not that useful except for sailing, which most of us are not doing
This is a correction to that.
What are the practical uses of a world scale map beyond sailing? I mean they could be neat for visualizing some useful route calculated as vectors and further used as vectors, but it would still be of mostly an aesthetic value, appealing to the viewers emotions, which could be achieved just as well with some palm oil and sugar.
> What are the practical uses of a world scale map beyond sailing?
Wow, is this even a genuine question?
I can use a world scale map to illustrate or explain some geographic point I make in a presentation. I can use it as a quick reminder of the geography related to some current news, etc.
If the mariners want to continue using Mercator, who's stopping them?
I mean it also accurately depicts relative land mass sizes? For the purposes of the UN that seems fairly relevant compared to Mercator which is a good map if you're actually navigating a coast line but atrocious if you're trying to gauge how big the territory you're talking about actually is.
> I mean it also accurately depicts relative land mass sizes?
At the cost of distorting shapes and distances.
> compared to Mercator
The UN resolution compared Equal Earth to Mercator, a comparison Equal Earth easily wins in many circumstances. But the comparison should not be to Mercator, but to other widely used projections that do a better job of minimizing distortions generally, such as Winkel Tripel.
The UN resolution is explicit that Equal Earth was chosen specifically for “social justice”–type reasons.
For the purposes of an organization concerned with the demography of actual people, what is the value Winkel Tripel is bringing at the scales it would be used in general application?
Because if you have a specific application then you choose the correct projection for the application.
But if you're just showing a world map, then what's important?
For the UN I'd say relative land mass size is a pretty relevant measure since that's where people live, and where environmental policy takes effect at the level of nation states it deals with.
And it's also the change you can actually pass in a highly subjective area: a slightly different projection no one wants to vote for isn't a viable option in the first place.
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