The Greenland Problem

Former National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien explained President-elect Donald Trump's plan to "extract the minerals and oil" from Greenland by making the territory "part of Alaska." https://t.co/fBqS9RHFtA

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"Well, the latest is Greenland is a highway from the Arctic all the way to North America to the United States," O'Brien opined. "Now, the kingdom of Denmark owns Greenland, and they've got an obligation to defend Greenland."

This guy’s a former National Security Advisor. And he’s the victim of a Mercator map:

Greenland is not bigger than Africa. A “highway from the Arctic…to the United States”? It’s nothing of the sort. Greenland is less than 1 million square miles; Africa is 11.6 million square miles.

 "The Mercator projection creates increasing distortions of size as you move away from the equator. As you get closer to the poles the distortion becomes severe. Cartographers refer to the inability to compare size on a Mercator projection as "the Greenland Problem." Greenland appears to be the same size as Africa, yet Africa's land mass is actually fourteen times larger (see figure below right). Because the Mercator distorts size so much at the poles it is common to crop Antarctica off the map. This practice results in the Northern Hemisphere appearing much larger than it really is. Typically, the cropping technique results in a map showing the equator about 60% of the way down the map, diminishing the size and importance of the developing countries. This was convenient, psychologically and practically, through the eras of colonial domination when most of the world powers were European. It suited them to maintain an image of the world with Europe at the center and looking much larger than it really was. Was this conscious or deliberate? Probably not, as most map users probably never realized the Eurocentric bias inherent in their world view. When there are so many other projections to chose from, why is it that today the Mercator projection is still such a widely recognized image used to represent the globe? The answer may be simply convention or habit. The inertia of habit is a powerful force.

So is stupidity. But it gets worse:

"I mean, the native people in Greenland are very closely related to the people of Alaska, and we'll make it a part of Alaska," he claimed. "So we're going to either buy it, or they're going to defend it, or they can pay us to defend it."

Part of Alaska? Does he not know where Greenland is? Or does he not know where Alaska is?

We have a military base in Greenland, for missile defense and early warning for space debris, etc. (Aliens, I guess.) I don’t see Russia making a ground assault over the pole anytime soon (with the army that can’t even invade Ukraine?). Do we really need to buy an island Denmark doesn’t want to sell?

Well, of course we do:

Agreeing with O'Brien, Chaffetz complained that "the people of Tennessee have to pay for everybody's defense around the world, whether it's the Panama Canal or Greenland."

The stupid, it burns.