The Lower 48 is almost exactly 4 Greenlands

The contiguous United States is about 3.7 Greenlands. At true scale: 8.08M km² for the Lower 48 versus 2.17M km² for Greenland. Mercator inflates anything far from the equator, and Greenland — sitting almost entirely above 60°N — is one of its biggest exaggerations.

Each shape here is Greenland, redrawn with an equal-area projection at exactly the same scale as the US map — rotated freely, since only the area is the claim, not the orientation. Three of them span the country side to side; the fourth exists only because 3.7 isn't a whole number, and it shows — wherever a Greenland spills past the coastline, an equal patch of the country goes uncovered somewhere else. The Pacific Northwest, New England, and Florida all peek through untouched.

Companion to our Africa is 14 Greenlands map — same method, same scale logic, a very different number.

Areas: CIA World Factbook (contiguous US ≈ 8.08M km², Greenland ≈ 2.17M km², ratio ≈ 3.7). Shapes: Natural Earth / US Census state boundaries. Every Greenland uses its own azimuthal equal-area projection at the US map's scale, so all shapes here are directly comparable.