To be fair, who actually has a mental model of what 20,779 square kilometres or 8,023 square miles (the area of Wales expressed as a number) actually looks like? Doesn't matter if you're using imperial or metric, it's not very intuitive beyond the human scale.
replyIf you're trying to communicate 'this much rainforest disappeared' or 'look how large this landmass-sized Antarctic iceberg is' to a wide audience a well-known area is a reasonable way to do it. In Britain basically everyone knows roughly what the size of Wales is relative to the other countries of the UK, even if they don't know its exact size.
What is good about metric is that once you have a good feel for different lengths of mm, cm,meters and kilometres you don’t need to worry about things like “10 Super Bowl stadiums”. You can easily extrapolate what 27km2 means, it doesn’t have to “look like” anything.
replyThat really isn't true. You in particular may be good at such extrapolation, but people as a rule are not. They need a concrete example to relate back to.
replyEven NASA uses AUs and degrees which are both not metric.
replyThe UK is arguably worse than the US in this regard. The US has mainly stayed with a system that sticks to one measurement across use cases. If I burn fuel at a rate of x miles per y gallons, I purchase it at the pump in gallons. If Tommy Atkins burns fuel at a rate of x miles per y gallon, he purchases it at the pump in liters; there's an extra step for conversion.
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