I don't know what you don't understand. I have been telling people all along that the AEP is not to be used as any kind of accurate representation, and that the only thing to scale is the distances from the north pole south along longitude.
When have I said otherwise? When did I seem confused? You are quick to come with lame insults, but your entire argument as far as I've ever seen is "the earth is round because it is." Now before you just devolve into your shell and call me a flat earther as some kind of self defense mechanism, when have I ever indicated I believed the Earth was flat? All I ever said is based on the information we have from observable phenomena that nothing is readily apparent about the shape of the Earth. The fact is, if 99% of people weren't told it was a sphere they wouldn't deduce that on their own.
Now please tell me more about how you think you're dealing with someone who hasn't been to elementary school.
I know you were answering "geckothegeek", but I hope this gets my meaning across.
You claim "All I ever said is based on the information we have from observable phenomena that nothing is readily apparent about the shape of the Earth.", but I claim that is rubbish because the earth has been
measured (by whom? Yes geodetic surveyors) and those measurements prove that the shape of the real earth will not fit on a plane surface.
The trouble is that every time we say that this flat earth map or that flat earth map cannot be correct TFES (or The Flat Earth Society - different!) says, "no, no that's not the right map!".
So what's the point of bothering about the earth's shape with TFES, no-one really seems to care - all they want is
"An old chooks debating society". As soon is any real evidence shows up the thread gets ignored! (probably my fault - tl;dr - blame the old guy!).
I have made numerous posts like:
I have tried to shorten it a bit, but it is still long!
I made a post http://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=4499.msg88069#msg88069
where I stated that the earth we live on simply cannot be flat.
What I am doing here is essentially repeating the earlier post, with a little different wording.
But, what about the crucial question? Let's look at the accepted dimensions of the earth.
From the TFES Wiki we have:
From: http://wiki.tfes.org/The_Ice_Wall
The figure of 24,900 miles is the diameter of the known world; the area which the light from the sun affects.
Presumably the distance from the north pole out to the equator can be taken as one quarter of this, 6,225 miles or 10,018 km.
I will use a rounded figure for the north pole to equator distance of 10,000 km, which is closer to the currently accepted value.
Then to get a figure for the equatorial circumference of the earth, we can look at the "definition" of the Nautical Mile:
A sea mile or nautical mile is, strictly, the length of a minute of arc measured along a meridian. It represents a minute of longitude only at the equator.
Currently the Nm is defined as exactly 1,852 meters.
So the circumference of the equator must be (1,852 m) x 60' x 360° = 40,003 km.
Again I will use a rounded figure for the equatorial circumference of 40,000 km.
But, on any flat earth map I have seen the equatorial circle circumference is simply the
circumference of a circle of radius 10,000 km, or 62,830 km.
I do not see any possible way of reconciling the quite accepted equatorial circumference of 40,000 km of the earth
with the flat earth equatorial circle circumference of 62,830 km.
What are your thoughts? Are my distances wrong?
It seems strange to me that so many flat earth supporters send post after post quibble about tiny problems they see in a satellite photo, or some feature of the globe, yet are simply quite unwilling to tackle (what to me are) glaring holes in their own model.
Part of this must be that so many of flat earth supporters simply do not understand the implications of what they claim to support.
The only reply that has ever made any sense has been "Evidence?", so I have a number of times provided evidence such as in:
A refutation of RE that RE-ers will accept, then simply ignored!
Also:
Geodetic Surveying PROVES a round earth: Why are we wasting time debating?.
That map shown in that last post was registered in 1855, yet its measurements are in close agreement with modern GPS based figures!
As another check on the old map (or the GPS if you prefer) the distance from Steep Point, Western Australia (the westernmost point) to Cape Byron, NSW (Australia) is Steep Point to Cape Byron (the easternmost point) is
3985 km scaled from the 1855 map and 3994 km on the current Garmin map (based on WGS 84).
In my mind that is enough to show that these dastardly NASA folk haven't been faking our maps.
Essentially I am claiming that
until someone can come up with a "Flat Map" that can fit these long established measurements, then just forget the idea of a Flat Earth!