There is a basic problem with this video. While it is true that regions near poles look much bigger in Mercator Projection than they are in reality, the comparisons are still being made in the video on a flat Mercator Projection, which is not the reality. Reality is the globe, not the projection of it. The video itself is always a projection, but a spinning 3D animation of the globe is still better than a flat, static and therefore distorted projection.
For example, around 4:39, Groenlandia is compared to Australia, South America and North America, first, making it much smaller (this is true because it is near North Pole and therefore it should so) but then is is moved unresized to be compared to those other regions which themselves should, in turn, be resized as well to make a fair comparison rather than on a flat Mercator projection.
So the basic idea is true, but the visual explanation is full of mistakes; it should have been made on a 3D globe to get a more proportional idea.
4 Likes
