Scottish Independence Campaign Battles Over BBC Weather Forecast

00_NOP writes "The political battle over Scotland's independence ballot — to take place in September this year — has now moved on to how the BBC project the UK on their national weather forecast. The BBC use a projection based on the view of Britain from geostationary weather satellites and so there is naturally some foreshortening at the northern end of Britain (Scotland, in other words). But nationalist campaigners say this means Scottish viewers are constantly being shown a distorted image of their country which makes it look smaller and hence (in their view) less able to support independence. In response others have suggested that the nationalists are truly 'flat earthers.'"

Comments

Re:Map projections

[ShanghaiBill]

I picture it being like our hillbillies of the south,wanting to secede @ civil war

Most hillbillies did NOT want to secede. Mountainous regions did not have plantations, so had few slaves, and the people there saw little benefit in secession. The hillbillies of Virginia seceded from their state, and rejoined the Union as West Virgina. The hillbillies of the other states raised regiments to fight in the Union Army. The only state that didn't raise at least a regiment for the Union was South Carolina, which has few mountains.

Time and economy say its right to let Scotland and Ireland go.

It seems the opposite to me. Economics says stay in the UK, and the independence movement is most driven by emotion. Which is why I predict the independence vote will fail. People will follow their heart when answering pollsters, but are more hard headed when casting ballots.

England should let them go and concentrate their efforts instead, on making a beer thats worth a fuck.

Or they could do what Americans do: chill it down so cold that you can no longer taste how horrible it is.

Re:Not the first time

[Sique]

The problem is that any projection of a map onto a flat surface is distorted. There are no un-distorted maps. A map contains serveral classes of important data on a map, and projections mainly affect distances, areas and angles. It is mathematically impossible to have a plane projection of the Earth's surface which correctly displays distances, but you can have a map that preserves angles and a map that preserves areas. You can't have a preservation of both area and angle in the same map though. But both angle-preserving and area-preserving maps are absolutely bad at displaying distances, so most projections in use today try to compromise between areas and angles and still have not too large distortions of distances. Northpole and Southpole, because they are uninhabited, are cut off most maps, which gives larger playroom for compromise-maps.

But if you have a map, which tries a compromise between angle preservation and area preservation, and which does not show North- and Southpole, you will always have the areas of the northern and southern regions displayed larger than they are compared to those near the Equator. This is a pure mathematical necessity and not limited to the Mercator projection. The only way to not have this distortion is not to have the Equator being horizontal on your map.

Re:Like nails on a chalk board

[beelsebob]

No, the point is that this map is meant to be useful. It is meant to accurately show what the weather is doing in various places. If someone chooses to make the representation of that 40 times smaller (yes, that really is how much smaller shetland ends up with this projection) for some people, than for others, then it's a very clearly biased map.

The point re independence is that while the weather map is clearly a subtle and tiny issue, these things add up. Every time a decision is made, it's made with first thought to London, and 1/40th of the thought to the north of Scotland. As such, decisions are made that are not in the best interest of Scotland, and hence... We should go independent.

Re:Not the first time

[Half-pint HAL]

The problem is that any projection of a map onto a flat surface is distorted. There are no un-distorted maps. A map contains serveral classes of important data on a map, and projections mainly affect distances, areas and angles. It is mathematically impossible to have a plane projection of the Earth's surface which correctly displays distances, but you can have a map that preserves angles and a map that preserves areas.

The BBC weathermap is not a true planar projection, though. It's a 3D projection rendered onto 2D, emulating the view of the UK from orbit. Neither ground-level angles, nor latitudinal distance, nor longitudinal distance, nor surface area are preserved. All distances and all areas are reduced. This is because the projection is seemingly taken from somewhere above France, so the south of England is close to the camera, and the north of Scotland is not only further away (hence smaller) but also reduced in height due to the curvature of the Earth included in the projection.

When this first came in (years ago now), the justification of this was that it is more "natural" to look at, and easier to understand... but only a handful of people have ever had the opportunity to see the UK from such an angle, so I can't see what's so natural about it. Furthermore, the BBC initially refused to allow any regional opt-out from the standard projection, so the Scottish weather was on a zoomed subsection of the map, which had practically zero north/south resolution compared to exaggerated east/west.

After a lot of complaints, the BBC tweaked the angles slightly, but the problem still remains. It is particularly irritating that the Gaelic weather forecasts, half of whose target audience are in the Highlands and Islands, is forced to use the same map, where their part of Scotland is so drastically shrunken that a single weather symbol blocks out over a hundred miles on the map.

Re:Firrrst post the noo

[Sesostris III]

Yes, I don't get a say (as in voting in the referendum) on this, and I accept that as right and proper. The decision whether to become independent or not is being rightly left to the voters of Scotland. I don't need to be referred to an article by Roger Scruton to "educate" myself on this! Actually, What I was trying to point out is that the voters of Scotland haven't as yet has a say on this themselves - they will do in September - so to indicate that they have already come to a decision (and that the decision was for 'moral' reasons) is incorrect.

Yes, I'm sure the rUK could vote in a Labour government on it's own. That was not the point I was trying to make. What I was pointing out was that the phrase "Successive Tory governments" seems to ignore the existence of the last Labour government (1997 to 2010), a government where much of the 'top brass' was Scottish.

(Talking of governments and parties, the McCrone report, although commissioned by a Conservative Government, was suppressed by the Labour Government under Harold Wilson!)

Finally, if Scotland does vote to become an independent country, then I shall wish it well, and hope for ongoing friendship between Scotland and the rUK. If Scotland votes to remain in the UK, then I hope we all continue to strive to make the UK work well for all its citizens.