[andymcsherry]

These comparisons come up all the time, and the issue is the Mercator projection makes Europe looks much larger than other countries on most maps. Much of Europe lies at a more extreme latitude than to the rest of the world. Basically nothing is at the same latitude in the Southern hemisphere and the only comparisons in the Northern hemisphere are Russia, Canada and Greenland. Other than Greenland, those countries don't generally get compared because they are gigantic in their own right, despite being much smaller than the appear on normal map projections.

[thraxil]

Every time this discussion about different projections comes up, I just want to ask: has no one ever seen a globe? When I was a kid, we had them in classrooms and I had one in my bedroom. I never got the impression that that was unusual or unique. Have globes just gone wildly out of fashion in recent years?

[simonh]

You can't see both Mexico and Europe on a globe at the same time, but you can on a map. Globes are great, but the ones you see in most households are quite small with very little detail.

Atlases can help by showing geographical regions in appropriate projections on each page, but again you can't easily see full page appropriate projections of both Europe and Mexico at the same time because they'll be on far separated pages.

[agos]

yeah, computers and smartphones have made globes wildly out of fashion

[MadSudaca]

Another thing that’s interesting about Europe is that it’s approximately at the same latitude as Canada, with a climate that is substantially warmer. If it was as cold as northern North America, humanity would have taken a completely different course.

[melx]

Yyy not sure if Northern Europe where much of "development" happened on the Old Continent as a whole, is "substantially warmer" than NA.

[laurencerowe]

This seems to be a west coast of ocean vs east coast of ocean effect. Seattle and Vancouver have a similar climate to Paris and London.

[kzrdude]

I don't know why this discussion is never ending, but I'm fed up with the Mercator projection. I hope things move along. Google maps has done their part, when you zoom out you get a globe, but others need to follow even more.

[agos]

where should things "move along" towards? the mercator projector has some very important features, what would be the alternative?

[Tagbert]

When I was a kid in grade school we had lots of different maps using different projections on the walls and in our text books. We learned about how Mercator is good for navigation and other maps are better at showing comparative size. It makes for a good topic in geography. Have we just given up on education?

[flohofwoe]

Is Mercator actually still used anywhere outside of clickbait blog posts?

For reference: this is the world map I know from school in the 1980's which is much less distorted than 'plain old Mercator':

https://i.redd.it/xcydn8owtzj61.jpg

[inkcapmushroom]

U.S.A. uses Mercator pretty much exclusively, from education all the way through TV, news, and movies.

[avgcorrection]

> These comparisons come up all the time, and the issue is the Mercator projection makes Europe looks much larger than other countries on most maps.

Daily reminder that Europe is a nanocontinent, not a country.

[likeclockwork]

Western Eurasia.