Did you look at the source below the globe? That entire thing is 73 very short lines of code, plus a plain HTML wrapper and some super-simple CSS.
I know about the movie clip system and don't deny what you claim. But now you're moving the goalposts as decoupling the elements from the Flash environment requires you to do more, well, hand coding. To do what you claim -- implement the same features with less code -- would require more handiwork inside the Flash authoring tool, which was never really a fun workflow even when Flash was more ubiquitous.
In any case, lowering the code count by relying on MovieClips, which as you say are basically libraries, hardly seems fair. I'm sure all the code in the OP could be reduced to about five lines, three of them being calls to external code and CSS files.
Dude, you serious? I can build you something similar in just 5 mins with 0 lines of code with easier maintainability and no calls to external CSS or Code.
>which was never really a fun workflow
I am surprised, because it was one of the most powerful features of flash, just like layers were for Photoshop. Maybe it's a personal opinion, but I loved this workflow personally.
But what I argue is that this D3 implementation, because of its code structure, is easier to build upon with even more data and interactivity. I would bet that whatever it takes you to build in 5 minutes with 0 lines of code, will take up many, many multiple times of work to do even trivial changes. Sure, you'd win in the scenario in which only a simple animated globe is called for, but I don't think that's what most of the OP's audience cars about.
And I wonder if you can even claim to do what you want in such a short time...for the simple matter that doing is in the Flash designer environment requires a lot of point and click (for 180+ MovieClips).
And this is why your comparison is apples to oranges, at best.