{"id":5245,"date":"2011-10-18T11:11:58","date_gmt":"2011-10-18T15:11:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2011\/10\/hubris_and_the_times_comprehensive_atlas\/"},"modified":"2017-10-19T19:23:51","modified_gmt":"2017-10-19T23:23:51","slug":"hubris-and-the-times-comprehensive-atlas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2011\/10\/hubris-and-the-times-comprehensive-atlas\/","title":{"rendered":"Hubris and the Times Comprehensive Atlas"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the publishers of the Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World<\/a><\/cite> announced that the newly released 13th edition showed that Greenland’s ice sheet had shrunk by 15 percent, climate scientists went ballistic<\/a>. While Greenland’s ice is<\/em> retreating, it’s not nearly by that much, and this is just the sort of error that encourages climate-change denialists.<\/p>\n

How did Collins Geo allow this to happen? This is the question Mark Monmonier<\/a> explores in a piece on the New Scientist<\/cite> website<\/a>. Monmonier, the author of How to Lie with Maps<\/a><\/cite> and many other<\/a> books<\/a>, argues that hubris was behind the mistake: that the towering reputation of the Times Atlases<\/a> led to overconfidence.<\/p>\n

An explanation lies partly in Collins Geo’s apparent decision to produce the map in house. If that was the case, the firm might have avoided its embarrassment with the obvious quality-assurance step of sending page proofs to carefully chosen experts. Appropriate scientists seldom decline invitations to serve as reviewers. […]<\/p>\n

It seems likely there was a belief that external review was unnecessary. Moreover, it seems that none of the publisher’s marketing mavens compared their provocative God’s-eye view with competing treatments on readily accessible scientific websites or Google Earth.<\/p>\n

Hubris is not too strong a word to explain HarperCollins’s predicament. A press release promising “concrete evidence of how climate change is altering the face of the planet forever” invites critical scrutiny by mainstream climate scientists as well as the self-proclaimed sceptics who are ever eager to pounce on overreaching pronouncements by the former. In Atlasgate, the pro-warming community, which outnumbers naysayers by perhaps 50 to 1, wasted no time in trashing the HarperCollins map.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Previously: Map Books for Fall 2011<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the publishers of the Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World announced that the newly released 13th edition showed that Greenland’s ice sheet had shrunk by 15 percent, climate scientists went ballistic. While Greenland’s ice… More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"autoblue_enabled":true,"autoblue_custom_message":"","autoblue_shares":[],"autoblue_post_url":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[110,639],"tags":[30,641],"class_list":["post-5245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","category-map-errors","category-world-atlases","tag-books","tag-times-atlases","post_format-post-format-link"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5745,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2017\/11\/new-maps-show-greenlands-glaciers-at-risk\/","url_meta":{"origin":5245,"position":0},"title":"New Maps Show Greenland’s Glaciers at Risk","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"8 November 2017","format":"link","excerpt":"NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory: \"New maps of Greenland's coastal seafloor and bedrock beneath its massive ice sheet show that two to four times as many coastal glaciers are at risk of accelerated melting as previously thought.\u00a0Researchers at the University of California at Irvine (UCI), NASA and 30 other institutions have\u00a0published\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Weather and Climate"","block_context":{"text":"Weather and Climate","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/weather-and-climate\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/greenland-glaciers-300x254.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5155,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2017\/10\/new-editions-of-two-smaller-times-atlases-one-very-small-indeed\/","url_meta":{"origin":5245,"position":1},"title":"New Editions of Two Smaller Times Atlases (One Very Small Indeed)","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"5 October 2017","format":"link","excerpt":"Today marks the U.K. publication of two atlases in the\u00a0Times atlas range: the eighth edition of the\u00a0Times Reference Atlas of the World and the seventh edition of the\u00a0Times Mini Atlas of the World. The\u00a0Reference is right in the middle of the Times atlas range: it's inexpensive (\u00a330 list, compared to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "World Atlases"","block_context":{"text":"World Atlases","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/world-atlases\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/times-reference-8th-220x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/times-reference-8th-220x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/times-reference-8th-220x300.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/times-reference-8th-220x300.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2814,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2016\/09\/new-edition-of-times-concise-atlas-now-out\/","url_meta":{"origin":5245,"position":2},"title":"New Edition of Times Concise Atlas Now Out","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"13 September 2016","format":"link","excerpt":"The 13th edition of the\u00a0The Times Concise Atlas of the World came out last week.\u00a0The HarperCollins listing sets out the updates and changes from the previous edition (including changing \"Czech Republic\" to \"Czechia,\" argh).\u00a0The\u00a0Concise\u00a0is the second-largest of the Times world atlases and slots between the\u00a0Comprehensive and the\u00a0Universal in terms of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "World Atlases"","block_context":{"text":"World Atlases","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/world-atlases\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"times-concise-13th","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/times-concise-13th-219x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1820404,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2023\/11\/a-new-edition-of-the-times-comprehensive-atlas\/","url_meta":{"origin":5245,"position":3},"title":"A New Edition of the Times Comprehensive Atlas","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"17 November 2023","format":"link","excerpt":"The 16th edition of the granddaddy of world atlases, the Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, is out this fall. It was published last month in the U.K. (on 12 October) and will ship in North American next month (on 12 December). It comes five years after the publication of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "World Atlases"","block_context":{"text":"World Atlases","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/world-atlases\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Product photo for The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, 16th edition","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/times-comprehensive-16th-230x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1787973,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2019\/10\/new-editions-of-world-atlases\/","url_meta":{"origin":5245,"position":4},"title":"New Editions of World Atlases","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"29 October 2019","format":"link","excerpt":"World atlases are still a thing, and the first of this month saw the publication of two new editions of venerable world atlases. First, the National Geographic Atlas of the World, a new edition of which comes out every four years. This year\u2019s is the 11th. I have to confess\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "World Atlases"","block_context":{"text":"World Atlases","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/world-atlases\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/national-geographic-atlas-11th-198x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1805575,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2021\/12\/2021-holiday-gift-guide\/","url_meta":{"origin":5245,"position":5},"title":"2021 Holiday Gift Guide","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"7 December 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Every year at about this time\u2014 (Actually no, check that, this year I\u2019m late; and last year I didn\u2019t post one at all except for this stationery guide.) \u2014I post a gift guide that lists some of the noteworthy books about maps that have been published this year. 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