Mapping the World

Abstract

Over the years I’ve had discussions with people who hold, shall we say, opinions that contradict mainstream scientific thought. Often, I felt, my interlocutors—anti-vaxxers, climate-change deniers, flat-Earthers, and others who discern conspiracy where the rest of us see science—refused to accept that human activity can impact the globe (“we’re just one species; how can we cause climate change?”) or even that there is a globe (“if Earth is curved, how come we can sometimes see very distant skyscrapers?”). How can they be so ignorant of the world, I’d wonder.