Depends what type of significance. Of course it's more significant when it's larger in size if you value things like farmland, natural resources, fishing, transportation, infrastructure, timezones, language, etc.

If you think the US is similar in size to Africa, like I thought, and you compare the 51 states to the 54 countries, you might think each African country is similar in area to a state in the USA and extrapolate to other beliefs accordingly. Maybe you think there is a greater cultural cohesion in the entire continent because people are closer to each other and so on. Turns out, there is more than 1.5 billion people in Africa. That is way more than in the US, but the size is really skewed in the Mercator.

I don't understand your point about wanting to make Greenland feel better. The Equal Earth Projection is more accurate when looking at land area, so it's not a question of making people feel better about the size of their country, more of a question of not having the Mercator projection contributing to people thinking less of our country, amongst other things, like just being more factual.

And like the other commenter said, Russia doesn't really have this problem anyway, it's very large in all our popular projections.

[–] petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 10 hours ago

Turns out, there is more than 1.5 billion people in Africa.

But these are facts I can learn independently of its, you know, appearance on a map. And outside of this being a notable news story, I don't really see it prompting any such questions.

so it's not a question of making people feel better about the size of their country

It is, though. That's actually the only purpose this serves.

I think you might read that as dismissive, but I see some value in making people feel better. Certainly in making the US feel worse.

I don't, however, think that this will meaningfully improve anything.

Russia doesn't really have this problem anyway, it's very large in all our popular projections.

It's area should still be incorrect, though, yes? Which would mean we have incorrect ideas about its natural resources, its farmland, its cultural cohesion?