Well, quite. This is why I question how serious Tom and the society are about developing a flat earth theory which actually works because the current one patently doesn't and when that is repeatedly demonstrated to them they leave the debate.
What are these forums for if not to debate this stuff and change the model as needed when flaws in it are demonstrated?
Their two options are either to concede that the earth is a globe or change their current flat earth model so it actually works.
The test of a good model is whether it explains observations and whether it can predict future events. Their current model can do neither.
As I said, my photos above do NOT prove a spherical earth, they simply prove that if light travels in straight lines (as Tom agrees it does) then for clouds to be lit from below then the sun must be PHYSICALLY below the level of the clouds. Tom talks about a row of street lamps and how as they recede to the distance they may appear to be below eye level:
If we have a series of lamp posts stretching into the horizon, it is possible to raise your hand to be above a small lamp post on the horizon in the distance. The distant lamp post is now looking up at your hand. The distant lamp post has the opposite perspective. It sees you at the horizon and it sees your hand slightly above the horizon, and therefore its photons are angled upwards at it.
This is the logic of a child who thinks that the cows in the distant field are tiny and the ones close up are much bigger. That is not how the real world works. I could indeed look at a row of lamp-posts like this
And raise my hand so that from
my perspective it appears as though my hand is above the level of the furthest lamp.
In real life of course this is how me and the lampposts are oriented. This is an artist's impression (unfortunately I was the artist) what someone looking at me and the lamp-posts from the side would see
I have drawn a line from the furthest lamp source to me. Which direction is it? Is the suggestion that the observer sees the shadow angling down and I would see the shadow angling up because of our different perspectives? That is absolutely not how shadows work, a shadow is cast because the photons from the physical light source hit the physical object at a certain angle. That angle depends on our physical positions in relation to one another.
To think of it another way, if Tom was sitting at the level of the light bulb of the furthest lamp and he wanted to shoot me for proving him wrong, which direction would he have to aim in, up or down? And would the answer change if I lift my hands in surrender so that from my perspective my hands were above his level?
So. In order for clouds to be lit from below and the sun to cast shadows angled upwards either:
1) The sun is PHYSICALLY below the level of the clouds
2) The light is bending somehow so it appears to be.
Pick one. But those really are the only two possibilities. There is no way a sun 3,000 miles high and 6,000 miles away can cast shadows like this otherwise.