… even after you've successfully made your case you'll still need to justify your reasoning for ignoring the vast majority of data points you personally find inconvenient. Whether you fight against 99.5% of the Earth's area or 90% of the data points collected is largely irrelevant - it's nothing but meaningless semantics that ignores the actual issue.
Start defending your position.
My position is that there are many clear problems with the data in the 1862 edition of the book ‘Lighthouses of the World’, which Samuel Rowbotham cites in
Earth not a Globe, experiment number 9.
First problem. Rowbotham cites Findlay as defining the visible range as the minimum distance to which the light can be seen in clear weather from a height of
10 feet above the sea level’. This is what the 1862 ed. states, p. 32. However the 1879 edition p.31 states ‘The distance of the sea-horizon due to that elevation [of the lighthouse], is stated to be the distance it may be seen from the deck of an ordinary vessel,
14 feet above the sea’
This discrepancy affects every calculation in Findlay’s book.
Second problem A number of figures given in the 1862 edition were revised in the 1879 edition, some of them cited by Rowbotham. For example, Rowbothamsays ‘The Light on Cape Bonavista, Newfoundland, is 150 feet above high water, and is visible 35 statute miles [=30 NM]. These figures will give, on calculating for the earth's rotundity, 491 feet as the distance it should be sunk below the sea horizon’. This calculation is correct assuming the figures given in the 1862 ed. p.111. Howeverthe 1879 ed., p. 157, gives 16 miles, not 30. If we assume the observer is 16 feet above water, not 10, and assume nautical miles are meant (Findlay never says), this is
less (not more) than the RE calculation.
Rowbotham writes ‘The Port Nicholson Light, in New Zealand (erected in 1859), is visible 35 statute miles, the altitude being
420 feet above high water. If the water is convex it ought to be 220 feet below the horizon’. But the 1879 edition (p.155) gives a height of 450.
Of course the 1879 edition could be wrong and the 1862 correct, but this contradicts the usual state of things where later editions correct mistakes in earlier ones, and in any case it casts doubt on the reliability of Findlay’s data, on which Rowbotham’s claims depend.
Third problemWhen we split Findlay’s data into UK (11%) and non-UK (89%) data, we find a
significant correlation (97.5%) between RE and Findlay UK estimate of visible range, and a very low (24%) correlation for non-UK.
Pete has challenged my claim of ‘significant’ for the 97.5% correlation. This is for over 50 data points, I refer him to any standard textbook on statistics on this point.
He has also claimed I am cherry picking the data. But my position, as stated above, is that there are clear problems with the data that Rowbotham was using (i.e. Findlay’s 1862 data). Either
(1) All the data, UK and non-UK, is weak. Then I have my case. Rowbotham was basing his claims on weak data.
(2) Some of the data is weak (the non-UK data), other data is strong (the UK data). This is my hypothesis. Findlay was almost certainly relying on agencies for the non-UK data, and weak data is what you often get with agencies. But if the UK data is strong, that supports the RE position, moreover Rowbotham’s case collapses.
(3) The non-UK data is strong, the UK data is weak. This contradicts the strong correlation found in the UK case. For the non-UK case we have merely weak correlation, which proves nothing.
(4) Both data sets are strong. But in that case we have the sea around the UK being convex, the sea around all other countries flat. Pete has talked about the UK being ‘hilly’, but the last time I looked, hills only exist on solid ground. We are talking here about the surface of the sea here, not the land, and the only ‘hills’ on the sea are temporary ones. I suppose it could be argued that there is a sort of permanent swell surrounding the British coastline, but that is implausible even in an FE state of mind.
I rest my case.