@toddhorowitz @infobeautiful

Sure, projecting a quasi-spheroid onto a plane will always cause distortions, but you can choose what to distort. Mercator keeps compass bearings and distorts shapes. The Albers Equal-Area projection, among others, keeps sizes but distorts shapes much more. Anyway, you can always calculate the surface area of land. In fact many countries in the world have been quite thoroughly surveyed.