greenland

Increasing temperatures melt the Greenland ice sheets, which decreases the salinity of the north atlantic.

Around 1300 there was a mini-ice age that caused widespread crop failures (and famine) in Europe, and made Greenland stop being green.

But if you want an Africa-sized Greenland and a huge huge Kamchatka, why not.

I think Africa would have more small villages than Greenland (and Northern Russia) combined, yet is afforded less space.

As an aside, have you looked closely at Greenland on a globe?

People really think Greenland is almost as large as Africa.

Yeah, a world map that shows Greenland and South America at the same size is probably not a map I want in my living room.

> As an aside, have you looked closely at Greenland on a globe?

I love the idea here, it's something I've dreamt of myself, but even after trimming Antarctica and the Arctic, I feel like the map is dominated by the least interesting possible features on the globe: Greenland and Siberia.

Now the effect of rising sea levels on my pleasant vacation on a pacific island is much less in doubt, some low lying areas will be underwater if the Antarctic or Greenland ice melts, which seems like it will take quite a while.

While it really is a tiny part of my life and I don't really care, the realization that Africa is huge and almost three times bigger then Europe and that Greenland is tiny is something I consider an important thing to know - and probably changes some of my views on things (for instance I never quite understood how Africa has so many countries - which if you triple it's size, it becomes much clearer).

The hole this article doesn't point out, and which has perhaps become more salient to the scientific community over the last few years, with incredible new sea ice lows, methane release, the newly understood vulnerability of antarctic and greenland land ice, dramatic weakening of the jet stream and major ocean currents, tar sands/fracking/arctic drilling...

I really dislike the article saying that "On a flat map of the world, Greenland appears as big as Africa".

Most of them are tiny island nations, everything south of Mexico is generally considered "Central America" by everyone else and everybody ignores Greenland (which is technically still kinda part of Denmark).

It was just a media thing." Then you've got things like the fact that there's pretty conclusive records of farming in Greenland as recently as 700 years ago, that died out due to the Earth getting colder.

"Nice Africa-sized Greenland you have there.."

It might be time for another letter to the Galicians: to let them know they're squatting on Greenland's TLD.

The transition into Mercator is pretty jarring at high latitudes (try zooming into Greenland).

Egregious examples worldwide include Argentina, most of Saskatchewan, Western China, most of Russia, and Eastern Greenland.