The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

Sep 09, 2026 11:33 PM - 5 days ago 3

Happy Wednesday! I dream you're enjoying Not-Ship — it's a afloat 1 today. If you admit the activity that goes into this newsletter, you tin show maine by becoming a paying subscriber aliases pinch a one-time donation of your choice.

💙 Amanda

It's uncommon that representation projections make world news. So past week was beautiful breathtaking for cartographers. The UN endorsed a resolution to beforehand maps that accurately bespeak the existent size of continents, dethroning the 500-year-old Mercator projection successful the process.

The decision, which was backed by the African Union, was astir unanimous: 164 countries voted successful favour and conscionable a azygous federation opposed. (Yeah, you guessed it: a classical American Exception™️.)

"Maps style our knowing of the world," said Togo's overseas curate Robert Dussey earlier the vote.

For astir half a millennium, the Mercator representation has shaped that knowing astir the West — inflating its size and stature astatine the disbursal of everyplace else.

Mercator is the most-widely utilized projection (Google Maps uses it, for one), but it was created successful 1569 during the property of exploration. It's mostly bully for oversea navigation. Any consecutive statement drawn connected the representation represents a changeless compass bearing.

Mercator: A representation for sailors

But what's awesome for navigation isn't truthful awesome for meticulous geographic representation. Distances and areas are progressively much exaggerated arsenic they move distant from the Equator. This is why Greenland looks astir the size of Africa. It's really 14 times smaller.

This disproportionately inflates the size of Europe, Russia and North America. And since we often, without thinking, usage size arsenic a proxy for value aliases power, this subtly reinforces a consciousness of bluish superiority complete the world south.

Criticism of the Mercator projection isn't new. It moreover came up connected 1 of the top TV shows of each time, the West Wing. (Don't email maine if you disagree. You're wrong.)

The projection projected by cartographers successful The West Wing is Gall-Peters. It fixes Mercator's halfway problem by presenting an equal-area perspective, showing the existent comparative size of countries that are minimized connected the Mercator map.

Gall-Peters: A representation to 'decolonize the curriculum'

An equal-area position intends that if a state takes up 1% of the Earth's existent aboveground area, past it would return up 1% of the representation area. But there's a trade-off: it's ace wonky. The distortion comes from trying to support those adjacent proportions while representing a spherical globe connected a level portion of paper. Land adjacent the poles gets vertically compressed and onshore adjacent the equator is vertically stretched.

In different words: Gall-Peters gets the size of continents comparative to different continents correct, but the shapes are off.

In 2017, Boston Public Schools acted connected The West Wing's suggestion, ditching Mercator for Gall-Peters to 'decolonize the curriculum'. Perhaps unexpectedly, this didn't spell complete good pinch the mapping community. Many felt Gall-Peters — pinch its awkwardly stretched countries — wasn't a awesome hole either.

Which is really we get to the UN's newest projection-of-preference: Equal Earth. It was created successful 2018 straight successful consequence to the Boston Public School cartographic controversy.

Equal Earth: A representation for the modern era

Equal Earth maintains the size accuracy of the Gall-Peters projection but without specified utmost distortion. While Gall-Peters uses consecutive lines, Equal Earth echoes the globe's existent style pinch curved lines. This distributes the stretching much evenly, though there's still immoderate distortion adjacent the poles.

Comparing the Mercator and Equal Earth projections, we tin spot really overmuch this affects the size of some Africa and Europe.

Using Equal Earth, Africa appears much existent to size

All maps distort the world successful immoderate way; it's the quality of trying to task a globe onto a level plane. This intends that maps are a bid of choices astir what's important. For the UN, the assemblage that represents the countries of the world, those choices spell beyond elemental geography.

As the solution itself states: "Correcting cartographic distortions of continental sizes constitutes an enactment of cognitive justness and memorial reparation."

CARTOGRAPHY. CAN'T. STOP.

In the liking of keeping things tight, I trim 2 representation projections from the main piece. But they are excessively absorbing not to share!

Winkel Tripel (1921): It was designed to minimize 3 kinds of distortion: area, guidance and distance. In 1998, National Geographic adopted this projection because it has the lowest distortion standard crossed one-page level maps. The trade-offs? It's much computationally complex, and it under- and over-states immoderate state sizes.

Dymaxion (1943): Finally, a representation for group who want thing unusable! Created by Buckminster Fuller, it unfolds the globe arsenic a polyhedron, showing landmasses arsenic 1 connected system. Actually, anthropologists for illustration this 1 because it helps to visualize continental relationships and humanities migrations.

READERS RESPOND

Last week I suggested we should each get amended astatine debunking 1 another. A fewer of you said 'hold my beer,' and pointed your debunkers astatine me:

One scholar based on that by utilizing past tense successful my first condemnation — "Do you retrieve really Covid-19 spread?" — I reinforced the falsehood that Covid is gone. Fair enough. I switched it to coming tense.

I besides sewage a statement from Jeremy B. Merrill, a top-notch information newsman astatine the Washington Post, astir the information down those astir apt to autumn for clone news:

That stat astir susceptibility to misinformation being lowest for "very liberal" group and rising to beryllium highest for "very conservative" sets disconnected siren bells for maine — is it truthful flattering that we are insufficiently skeptical? So I looked into it, and I interest the results are skewed because the underlying quiz asks participants to separate real/fake headlines, which favours group acquainted pinch the (generally reliable!) mainstream media's header styles + (sometimes boring) topical focuses. The quiz down it is public.

Secondly, there's nary left-coded disinformation. I'm funny astir whether "very liberal" respondents tin reliably observe overstated claims astir Trump/Russia and biology claims astir ambiance alteration and power usage — aliases much hot-button issues. Of people liberals are little apt to autumn for right-coded disinfo!

Rest assured this isn't sour grapes: I sewage a 20/20 connected the quiz. :D

Seems for illustration a reasonable critique. A 2024 meta-analysis of 31 studies astir misinformation susceptibility besides recovered that older age, much acquisition and identifying arsenic a Democrat were associated pinch greater expertise to observe clone news. But galore of these utilized the header method arsenic well.

Your turn
Want to brag astir your susceptibility to misinformation (we spot you, Jeremy 😉) aliases stock your large feels astir the UN representation update? Just respond to this email.

FROM ELSEWHERE

Here's what I recovered interesting, important aliases delightful this week:

How vulnerable is alcohol? An age-old mobility that seems to person an ever-changing answer. HowTown has a awesome deep-dive into the research. I don't want to springiness excessively overmuch away, but you astir apt won't for illustration the findings.

The Internet's ghostwriter. Pew Research tried to activity retired how overmuch of the web is written by AI. Signs of AI authorship tin beryllium recovered in over one-third of pages published aft ChatGPT was released.

"AI intensifies a situation whose architecture was built earlier." Taiwan's cyber ambassador writes a beautiful statement astir resisting optimization alternatively of resisting AI. (Thanks to scholar Eileen for sharing!)