Standard maps and globes are wildly inaccurate in size representation - especially Google Earth!

I came across a thread talking about Greenland I mentioned that the size of the land mass is THE MOST grossly over-represented when it comes to standard maps and for most modern globes. It is made to look 3-4.5x larger than it actually is, and on top of that the "history", folk lore and historical maps (even from the Vatican and Islamic archives) talk about how it was once a land of beautiful, LARGE & mature forests as well as areas of pasture land - a land that was ideal for hardy Europeans and British, because it wasn't even as harsh as the Scandinavian lands in the times before ~16-17th century. It even had a climate where wine could be grown and they produced excellent vintages (supposedly well known to English monks & French nobles! probably vikings as well.

The "island" - I consider it more a mini continent TBH, had "large" towns/cities in the center of the tall mountains in the center of the island where livestock was raised and thrived. I'm wondering if this was not the land that some vikings talk about as "Valhalla" and the "land of the Gods" like what Floki talks about in the TV show Vikings. In addition to farming they built wood and sod houses and lots of ships and probably exported a lot of it until the little ice age set in when they realized they needed all the heat they could get.

I've never had an easy time believing that there is a 1-3 mile ice glacier covering the entire island. I think they also use this deception of the map size to make people scared of global warming and fear the melting of all that ice! But just wait until you see how bigit really is!

While this subject might not be very interesting to many people, it is actually much more important than others realize as is has GREAT effect on geopolitics and perceived power of various countries. There are even theories about how distance from pole or equator effects the size of a mile (mathematically relative) and possibly everything to some degree. That last part is a little out there, but the rest of this response has lots of interesting info. Please read over it and LMK what you think or if you knew this stuff before! I spend more time than I wanted but since this sin't covered much of anywhere and is taught in the brainwashing institutions, I figured someone should spread the truth.


I should have started here, but as always I made it more difficult. Here is a good link that represents Greenland laid over Africa

www.indy100.com...

geoawesomeness.com...

Well you are right and your not, and I made a simple mistake that is kind of Google fault. I did a simple search for "Greenland" and "Alaska", in those orders. ON the right hand side it shows "area = 836,300 sq miles". i did the same thing for Alaska and got the same format of results, so I thought (on the right hand side) , of 737,438 of what I thought was sq miles - so it would have been 13% larger than Alaska. The problem is, they didn't list population for Greenland but they did for Alaska, and vice-versa, Greenland listed the area, but no population. This is all on the google search page, not on their Wiki pages. So I mistook those numbers.
Eithere way, I checked them out and got the following
Greenland = 836,300 sq miles is = 21.7% the size of Canada or = 22% the size of the US (all 50 states)
Alaska = 663,268 sq miles
Greenland is 26% lager by land mass/area


Considering Canada is
3,855,100 sq mi or 4.61x larger than Greenland
US is:
3,796,742 sq mi or 4.54x larger than Greenland

Top 11 sized countries - larger than Greenland (including Greenland @ position 12)
All area's in km^2
1 Russia 17,098,242 - Greeland is 12.67% the size of RUSSIA!!!
2 Canada 9,984,670
3 United States 9,826,675
4 China 9,596,960
5 Brazil 8,514,877
6 Australia 7,741,220
7 India 3,287,263
8 Argentina 2,780,400
9 Kazakhstan 2,724,900
10 Algeria 2,381,741
11 Congo, Democratic Republic of the 2,344,858
12 Greenland (Denmark) 2,166,086

Countries Smaller than Greenland, but larger then Alaska
All area's in km^2
13 Saudi Arabia 2,149,690
14 Mexico 1,964,375
15 Indonesia 1,904,569
16 Sudan 1,861,484
17 Libya 1,759,540

Now take a look at the DRC/Congo & Greenland & Saudi Arabia and just LOOK at how big Greenland looks compared to these other countries on the map. Obviously they are different shapes, buy you can tell there is a HUGE difference in the size on the map. I forget the term that is used to describe this, IIRC, it is named after a map maker from the 18th or 19th century and starts with an M (the effect or the name of the they of map that distorts like this). basically it makes the entire northern hemisphere look MUCH larger than the southern hemisphere unless they manipulate the countries on purpose.

DRC 1345 miles N-S , 1215 miles E-W
Greenland 1650 miles NS, 770 miles E-W
Saudi Arabia - 1,269 miles N-S 933 miles E-W

Try this - this will really blow your mind! Measure the distance across Australia E to W at the very center of the country N/S wise. Measure from the Goldcoast/Brisbane to Carrarang (West coast) It's about 2400-2440 miles.

Now go to Nova Scotia and find "Cape Dyer" it's the front of the bottom paw of the upside down "Scottie dog" and closest point to Greenland. Now find Elephant point or Noorvik in Alaska (west coast). It the first southern "inlet" cove/"bay" (LARGE bay) area coming down the west coast from the north/western most point in Alaska. That is 2,420-2,430 miles. Look at the size difference to Australia on the map! I measured with very accurate calipers between the 2 points on each country and I got 900 units for Canada/Alaska and 365 units for Australia. That means Australia shows up as 40% the size of the same size/distance in the northern hemisphere.

There is speculation as to why maps are drawn this way, it supposedly benefited the British, Scandinavian and Russian Empire (most of whom made the maps in the 18th & 19th centuries! - as well as french, Germans, Italians and other, but they benefit from the "north looking larger than southern hemisphere countries too.
**edit found the "term" and map maker for current world view - we use "Mercator" maps

en.wikipedia.org...

There is also some speculation that this stuff really isnt' so far off, if you get into "flat earth" talk, or even a "bowl" earth or similar, some of this can be explained a little, but not entirely, much of that is bad map design and

Which map is best map?

geoawesomeness.com...

Globe made into an accurate map - cut into pieces/slices

images.app.goo.gl...

Globe Caught Lying? Distortion vs Flat Maps Measure Over 10X

a reply to: DigginFoTroof

There is speculation as to why maps are drawn this way, it supposedly benefited the British, Scandinavian and Russian Empire (most of whom made the maps in the 18th & 19th centuries! - as well as french, Germans, Italians and other, but they benefit from the "north looking larger than southern hemisphere countries too.

The only speculation is from those who don't understand the actual reason for using a Mercator projection. As your source says:

It became the standard map projection for navigation because of its unique property of representing any course of constant bearing as a straight segment. Such a course, known as a rhumb or, mathematically, a loxodrome, is preferred by navigators because the ship can sail in a constant compass direction to reach its destination, eliminating difficult and error-prone course corrections.

en.wikipedia.org...


Your headline is incorrect though, a globe provides an accurate representation of both the size and shape of the continents (as well as islands like Greenland).

I was under the belief that Africa was much much larger than regularly depicted on maps. In fact I remember seeing illustrations that showed North America, Europe and possibly Russia (if I remember correctly) sitting within the circumference of the African continent.

I’ve never been to space for a real life birds eye view so couldn’t say 100%.

Once more, read my signature..

Wow, people really need better education.

a reply to: DigginFoTroof

maps and globes are wildly inaccurate

The Maps are racist againsts Flat Earthers !!!

a reply to: DigginFoTroof

I have never heard of those Vatican and Islamic tales of Greenland.
Current estimates are that the Greenland ice sheet is at least 400.000 years old, that's at least half a million and probably more like 800.000 years old, that still however means that within the last million years much of Greenland may have been free of ice.

BUT.

It also means' that unless humanity has a very long memory these ancient records and folk memory's may have been talking about another location and NOT Greenland at all.

What happens when island's rise from the sea bed, ocean current's change direction around them and when they sink back down those same current's then change again, if it was not for the Oceanic conveyor current's we in northern Europe would be far colder than we are today especially in western Europe, how much of a change of direction in the gulf stream would have to occur for Greenland to be the beneficiary of that warming affect instead?, still the estimates are 400 to 800 thousand years BUT it was not always ice bound.

Interesting thread, that snippet alone that there are tales of the land being warm is interesting though you know we do know a lot about the Viking settlement prior to the little ice age, it was a warm period in recent geological history and during that time there were claim's that the southern part of Greenland had some forest and the Viking's settled there using there colony to explore further west until they found Vinland - the land of vines and forests much like there home but at that time even warmer which we now know was the newfoundland colony which was probably either wiped out by the local peoples (Skraelings in Viking tongue meaning foreigners) or went native - probably wiped out or the natives would have been using swords, then came the little ice age, the Viking settlement on Greenland died a slow death over several generations and the glaciers even rolled over there church leaving only the foundation of it's wall's and those of a few houses that have been excavated, over the course of those generations the settlers at the Greenland colony went from being about 6' on average very tall for peoples of that period to about 5'2" and the bones and teeth of those final generation's show that they died more of malnutrition and starvation than from the cold itself, at that same time the canals of Venice froze solid and it was not until about 1814 the Thames in London used to freeze every winter solid and they would hold an annual fair and market on top of the ice itself.

The Norse despite having great ship's whose ship lap planking (overlapping planking creating ridges along which air could be trapped making them quicker in the water as the air reduced the friction of the water against the hull) made them a semi planning (Ride over - the fast they move the higher in the water they are and they displace less water as a result) hull despite there displacement (ride through - having to displace an equal amount of water) shape were far from the most cultured people to have ever called Scandinavia there home, there ancestors perhaps 4000 years ago during another mild spell in Denmark built buildings that we would recognize today, square built proper building's with porches, room's inside etc but by the time of the Viking's other than there great long hall most of there homes were hovel's and some Vikings even lived in holes dug out of the side of hill's using the smoke of there fires to keep pests and creepy crawlies at bay (they even used the ruins of roman villas as stables and lived in such hovels themselves).

Columbus supposedly gave an account of seeing sea going native American ships which sailed between Hispaniola (Haiti) the other islands of the Caribbean and the mainland and it is possible if we look at the coc aine mummy's and tobacco as well as other south American compounds not found on this side of the Atlantic that this could mean that it was THEY whom discovered us first and not the other way around, then we have the Brazilian cover up of the discovery of a roman merchant ship in the bay of rio de Janeiro, after the American discoverer went public and asked for a permit to explore the wreck upon which he had seen several amphora of the type found in the roman empire the Brazilian navy then dumped sand and gravel over the ship since if there nations founder can be proven to have NOT discovered there country it could be a shock to there patriotism - as well as meaning the native people are probably also not the ignorant savages they are made out to be there.
www.nytimes.com...
www.abovetopsecret.com...

So what I am saying is that the Viking's knew of Newfoundland and back then Vines grew wild there as the climate was very mild at the time of there (re)discovery of the Americas, Greenland has probably been almost entirely frozen (Except for coastal southern areas) for the better part of a million years (and we are 'supposedly' less than 300.000 years old as modern humans) so unless someone was around back then and our oral history goes back that long (the Indians - India - have an oral tradition that talk's of millions of years ago and even of things such as a bridge build between India and Sri Lanka 400.000 years ago en.wikipedia.org... and arrows of the god's that explode in what sound's awfully like a nuclear explosion/war) BUT like I say the Boffin's working with the best 'fragments' of (ACCEPTED) Evidence that they can and with the idea's of a Victorian gentleman whom visited some pacific islands (to guide them) are convinced we are less than 300.000 years old as a species (they believe we are nothing but animals I disagree obviously) - and that human's that existed before that were knuckle dragging moron's whom banged stones together all day long.

Anyway even when faced with evidence like this there are people on this site that IGNORE, DENY and then make all kinds of excuses for but basically refuse to accept even though if real it would fit perfectly into the modern species timeline that they cling too like a child's comfort blanket.




Let's just go for a mental experiment, imagine that the entire south American continent had undergone a huge cataclysm, as the continental plate of south American drifted ever further westward over the older thick ancient pacific plates it may have drifted over the remains of something called a proto-continental mass, an unusually thick pacific ocean plate which itself may once have been a continent much - much earlier in the earth's history, meanwhile as the ice melted at the end of the last ice age the pressure on the thin - young - ocean plates in the Atlantic increased AND simultaneously the magma beneath them lowered in pressure as it moved back under the areas were the ICE (which was over 2 miles thick in places) had formerly depressed the northern continent's causing the still ongoing process we today call Glacial Rebound.

Something may have given, a huge earthquake as the entire continent of south America TILTED cataclysmically thrusting hundreds of miles of former land deep into the Atlantic ocean while simultaneously the probably far older than this crowd accept city of Puma Punku/Tihuanaco/tiwanaku was shattered it's great stones flung about like a child's building block's as it was thrust upward from sea level to the great heights were it now sits on the Bolivian altiplano, once a city on a western south American fjord with a sea port now lost to the clouds.

Meanwhile a huge tidal wave - or several of them - washed over both the Atlantic and the pacific ocean's wiping out the majority of human civilization that had escaped the destruction and natural sea level rise of the end of the ice age leaving only the hunter gatherer tribal's -

I imagine most people don't understand this. I can hear school kids before map study got canned. "It's too hard and boring."

I don't think most people can even use a map.

a reply to: ShadowChatter

That's one of my favorite scenes from The West Wing! Such a good show.

Anyways, the part I find most interesting in OP is the speculation that Greenland may be what the Vikings referred to as Valhalla. Off to research that idea now.

a reply to: LABTECH767

- continued.

- that lived in the hinterlands away from the coastal civilizations that had been wiped out entirely to remember what had come before.


Just a mental experiment but think about it.

Also think about how the Oceanic conveyor would have been altered by a shallower narrower Atlantic that pushed it further east until it got further north were that ocean current indeed have not only been warmer than it is today but also bigger but with the subduction of the ocean bed it is possible that it never reached as far north as there may have been Other islands' and obstacles in the way of it's progress so not allowing it to bring it's climate warming affect to northern Europe and Greenland of that time.


On a side note the reason that northern AND southern nations look larger than they are is because it was the only way to project a globe onto a flat map - by distorting them but if you look at the lines on such a map it usually depicts this.

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: DigginFoTroof

I have never heard of those Vatican and Islamic tales of Greenland.
Current estimates are that the Greenland ice sheet is at least 400.000 years old, that's at least half a million and probably more like 800.000 years old, that still however means that within the last million years much of Greenland may have been free of ice.

BUT.

It also means' that unless humanity has a very long memory these ancient records and folk memory's may have been talking about another location and NOT Greenland at all.

What happens when island's rise from the sea bed, ocean current's change direction around them and when they sink back down those same current's then change again, if it was not for the Oceanic conveyor current's we in northern Europe would be far colder than we are today especially in western Europe, how much of a change of direction in the gulf stream would have to occur for Greenland to be the beneficiary of that warming affect instead?, still the estimates are 400 to 800 thousand years BUT it was not always ice bound.

Interesting thread, that snippet alone that there are tales of the land being warm is interesting though you know we do know a lot about the Viking settlement prior to the little ice age, it was a warm period in recent geological history and during that time there were claim's that the southern part of Greenland had some forest and the Viking's settled there using there colony to explore further west until they found Vinland - the land of vines and forests much like there home but at that time even warmer which we now know was the newfoundland colony which was probably either wiped out by the local peoples (Skraelings in Viking tongue meaning foreigners) or went native - probably wiped out or the natives would have been using swords, then came the little ice age, the Viking settlement on Greenland died a slow death over several generations and the glaciers even rolled over there church leaving only the foundation of it's wall's and those of a few houses that have been excavated, over the course of those generations the settlers at the Greenland colony went from being about 6' on average very tall for peoples of that period to about 5'2" and the bones and teeth of those final generation's show that they died more of malnutrition and starvation than from the cold itself, at that same time the canals of Venice froze solid and it was not until about 1814 the Thames in London used to freeze every winter solid and they would hold an annual fair and market on top of the ice itself.

The Norse despite having great ship's whose ship lap planking (overlapping planking creating ridges along which air could be trapped making them quicker in the water as the air reduced the friction of the water against the hull) made them a semi planning (Ride over - the fast they move the higher in the water they are and they displace less water as a result) hull despite there displacement (ride through - having to displace an equal amount of water) shape were far from the most cultured people to have ever called Scandinavia there home, there ancestors perhaps 4000 years ago during another mild spell in Denmark built buildings that we would recognize today, square built proper building's with porches, room's inside etc but by the time of the Viking's other than there great long hall most of there homes were hovel's and some Vikings even lived in holes dug out of the side of hill's using the smoke of there fires to keep pests and creepy crawlies at bay (they even used the ruins of roman villas as stables and lived in such hovels themselves).

Columbus supposedly gave an account of seeing sea going native American ships which sailed between Hispaniola (Haiti) the other islands of the Caribbean and the mainland and it is possible if we look at the coc aine mummy's and tobacco as well as other south American compounds not found on this side of the Atlantic that this could mean that it was THEY whom discovered us first and not the other way around, then we have the Brazilian cover up of the discovery of a roman merchant ship in the bay of rio de Janeiro, after the American discoverer went public and asked for a permit to explore the wreck upon which he had seen several amphora of the type found in the roman empire the Brazilian navy then dumped sand and gravel over the ship since if there nations founder can be proven to have NOT discovered there country it could be a shock to there patriotism - as well as meaning the native people are probably also not the ignorant savages they are made out to be there.
www.nytimes.com...
www.abovetopsecret.com...

So what I am saying is that the Viking's knew of Newfoundland and back then Vines grew wild there as the climate was very mild at the time of there (re)discovery of the Americas, Greenland has probably been almost entirely frozen (Except for coastal southern areas) for the better part of a million years (and we are 'supposedly' less than 300.000 years old as modern humans) so unless someone was around back then and our oral history goes back that long (the Indians - India - have an oral tradition that talk's of millions of years ago and even of things such as a bridge build between India and Sri Lanka 400.000 years ago en.wikipedia.org... and arrows of the god's that explode in what sound's awfully like a nuclear explosion/war) BUT like I say the Boffin's working with the best 'fragments' of (ACCEPTED) Evidence that they can and with the idea's of a Victorian gentleman whom visited some pacific islands (to guide them) are convinced we are less than 300.000 years old as a species (they believe we are nothing but animals I disagree obviously) - and that human's that existed before that were knuckle dragging moron's whom banged stones together all day long.

Anyway even when faced with evidence like this there are people on this site that IGNORE, DENY and then make all kinds of excuses for but basically refuse to accept even though if real it would fit perfectly into the modern species timeline that they cling too like a child's comfort blanket.

Let's just go for a mental experiment, imagine that the entire south American continent had undergone a huge cataclysm, as the continental plate of south American drifted ever further westward over the older thick ancient pacific plates it may have drifted over the remains of something called a proto-continental mass, an unusually thick pacific ocean plate which itself may once have been a continent much - much earlier in the earth's history, meanwhile as the ice melted at the end of the last ice age the pressure on the thin - young - ocean plates in the Atlantic increased AND simultaneously the magma beneath them lowered in pressure as it moved back under the areas were the ICE (which was over 2 miles thick in places) had formerly depressed the northern continent's causing the still ongoing process we today call Glacial Rebound.

Something may have given, a huge earthquake as the entire continent of south America TILTED cataclysmically thrusting hundreds of miles of former land deep into the Atlantic ocean while simultaneously the probably far older than this crowd accept city of Puma Punku/Tihuanaco/tiwanaku was shattered it's great stones flung about like a child's building block's as it was thrust upward from sea level to the great heights were it now sits on the Bolivian altiplano, once a city on a western south American fjord with a sea port now lost to the clouds.

Meanwhile a huge tidal wave - or several of them - washed over both the Atlantic and the pacific ocean's wiping out the majority of human civilization that had escaped the destruction and natural sea level rise of the end of the ice age leaving only the hunter gatherer tribal's -

We call them Vlar Global Continental Displacement Waves.Brought to you by the Planet formerly known as Wormwood but today known popularly as Nibiru or Planet7X.

Hmmm. Never even thought of this being an issue. Some maps have greenland really big, like this. earthquake.usgs.gov... %22%2C%22listFormat%22%3A%22default%22%2C%22mapposition%22%3A%5B%5B-89.96519674789181%2C-1268.4374999999998%5D%2C%5B89.96519674789182%2C441.5625%5D%5D %2C%22overlays%22%3A%5B%22plates%22%5D%2C%22restrictListToMap%22%3A%5B%22restrictListToMap%22%5D%2C%22search%22%3Anull%2C%22sort%22%3A%22newest%22%2C% 22timezone%22%3A%22utc%22%2C%22viewModes%22%3A%5B%22list%22%2C%22map%22%5D%2C%22event%22%3Anull%7D

Another image of size, you can move the field to see both greenlands at the same time. www.mylifeelsewhere.com...

Well that's what happens when you take a disc and try to make it into a sphere. This was discussed in the January edition of PEZ quarterly. www.youtube.com...





LABTECH767

One big problem cartography has in representing maps is how do you use a flat 2D surface to represent a 3D model of Earth. Try wrapping a piece of paper around a ball, it is going to bunch up and crease in places as it tries to fit the curvature. There are many different ways maps can drawn to maintain some information at the loss of other information.

Greenland coming out all stretched and bigger than the others is due in part to sitting nearer the north pole and getting the map creased up with the curvature of the Earth.

Other problems for cartography include national pride and ego's. They have been known to get in the way when deciding what information to keep and remove on a map. Fake news is not new and always a good idea to check your sources and be aware of bias when exploring maps. Some errors are just the nature of the trade and limitations of maps. There is also some political bias at work, which does create interesting maps in their own way as political forces move.

Here is a nice thread about Mercator and size-corrected projections.

Edit: goddamnit, mobile edits suck!
Anyway, check their wonderful map out!

originally posted by: roadgravel
I imagine most people don't understand this. I can hear school kids before map study got canned. "It's too hard and boring."

I don't think most people can even use a map.

That is so odd. All my life, I've been able to use maps easily and it has also frustrated me to no end when a significant other or other companion is on navigation duty. I can't drive and use a map at the same time people! Well, until the highly inaccurate Google maps came along on my magic plastic brick.

a reply to: billxam

Waze is pretty good.

a reply to: DigginFoTroof

Yes this is how maps work. It's an issue with representing a 3d object on a 2d plane.

I thought this was common knowledge.

a reply to: Phage

Waze is one of the most privacy defeating apps in existence....

a reply to: hombero

Definitely not something I was ever taught. I travel a lot with work and considered myself somewhat an experienced person with geography until a museum visit a few years back. A speaker was giving a talk on maps, planets etc and had a globe that represented the true size of continents etc. I was blown away, you learn something new every day !!!!

Anyone simply bicycle across the Continents to validate any of these Maps....sometimes the KISS Method is best.