[Tom Bishop]

This person was featured on Mark Sargent's show, and had some interesting comments regarding International Shipping and the shape of the Earth. He says that the routes do not make the logical RE routes. Oakland to Guam passes through Alaska rather than Hawaii; shipments from South America to the rest of the world route through the US.

Runtime: 9m

[Longtitube]

Bizarre. Makes me wonder why sailing ships took the routes they did from Europe to Australia and back, eg “The Last Grain Race” by Eric Newby. Would have made more sense to head north on the way back, skirt the Philippines and Japan, head along the west coast of N and S America before rounding the Horn and back up the Atlantic. Might have been safer too, the storm descriptions from these voyages were hair-raising.

[Longtitube]

For an overview of shipping routes across the world just 8 years ago, the interactive map at https://www.shipmap.org/ is fascinating. Once the voiceover has finished, you can play with the settings to display routes by container as well as other ships. There's very little of the world's oceans not covered by shipping routes, despite what the shipping agent has to say.

(caution: Mercator-like projection of Round Earth model used)

[GreatATuin]

For an overview of shipping routes across the world just 8 years ago, the interactive map at https://www.shipmap.org/ is fascinating. Once the voiceover has finished, you can play with the settings to display routes by container as well as other ships. There's very little of the world's oceans not covered by shipping routes, despite what the shipping agent has to say.

(caution: Mercator-like projection of Round Earth model used)

Even better, https://www.marinetraffic.com/ tracks 200k vessels live. They sell some of their data, if you think it's fake maybe you'd want to call out the fraud.

[Tom Bishop]

I don't believe that he said that there aren't any paths going the pro-RE geographical route. He said that the majority make an anti-RE geographical route.

There are other reasons to be going on any particular route other than geography. There may be making diversion stops, the vessels needed elsewhere afterwards, special refinery stops for oil transport industry, etc. The RE arguments on this unfortunately generally neglect to provided a through enough analysis or any expert sources to tell us what is occurring.

[Longtitube]

It also doesn’t help that a “great circle” route doesn’t go from Oakland to Guam via Hawaii, it passes well to the north of Hawaii.

http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=oak-gum

[GreatATuin]

I have to admit I didn't have the patience to watch the whole video. Did he come up with a thorough statistical analysis of shipping routes? Can we see the data anywhere? Or maybe he just mentioned a few anecdotal examples?

[Tumeni]

I don't believe that he said that there aren't any paths going the pro-RE geographical route. He said that the majority make an anti-RE geographical route.

I have the YouTube transcript. What are the pertinent phrases from what you heard or read? What did he say?

EDIT - finally had time to copy/paste the transcript and clean up the mishearing of his accent/dialect;

"Hello everyone. I would like to do this as short as possible. Just got home, (mumble) whether to do this or not, said "you know what - to hell with it gonna do it anyway"

My name is (name) Memphis Tennessee. I'm originally from Puerto Rico, somehow I end up here anyway; I work for this transportation company, we do freight all over this plane. My job is a senior agent for the International Trace Department; basically what I do is I help customers that have issues, mainly in customs, with their freight abroad, all over the place

I can honestly say they're tracking this shipment from point A to point B - it doesn't show me that we live on a spinning ball flying through cosmos at ridiculous speeds - make no sense, make no sense at all. What what it does show me that we're
definitely living on a plane.

If you follow Mark Sergeant and I will be one of the subject matter people I wrote in my email was actually an example of something that I have to deal with it every day this case was our shipment going from Oakland to Guam if you have a globe the obvious route will be from Oakland to Hawaii then to Guam, but that is not how it goes. I would say that more than 95% of the shipment going from the states to anywhere in Asia or the Pacific instead of going through Hawaii which will make sense on a globe they go through Alaska; on a globe it really doesn't make any sense at all talking logistics, fuel efficiency, it just doesn't make any sense, being a transportation business that's one of the main things; try to lower cost of fuel, but - if you see this route, or any route for that matter on a flat earth map, regardless of which one you like, it's almost a straight shot - it makes sense.

The issue I have with this particular case was the the shipper was, she was upset because the package got late, to Guam, the destination, and she was tracking, and she saw the package was in Alaska and then went to Japan and then went to Guam and to her it didn't make any sense, okay. So, again, I was just gonna say "Hey, lady just pull out flat map and you will see that, you know, that's the way it goes".

Anyways what I think was ... shipment going out of South America, dealing with customs all over, I have this particular agent that I always go to whenever have an issue in Argentina, and I knew the answer but I asked him anyway out of curiosity, and I say "Hey, any package that go from this place, Argentina, that have to go to the Europe or Africa or Australia, what route do they take" and he say "Anything that comes out of South America will come here to the States, and then go to the destination". You can argue that they need to come here through customs - no, they don't.  You do customs at the destination. You can argue that they come here to get more (mumble). Latin American market is so huge that you make no sense for them to come here and then go whatever they need to go they can go straight shot - from there to whatever, but if you put it on a flat earth sample a package that it's gonna go to Europe, it make more sense coming straight to the states and then to Europe but every part of Europe or to Africa for that matter still come here go to the Europe and then go to their destination, we showed that Flat Earth makes more sense.

Shipping that going from South America to Asia, you got it - they come here to the States, go through Alaska, and they go to their final destination. There's no flight out of South America anywhere than here. We can prove that we live on a flat surface; maybe not to you, but me seeing it day in and day out - it really does.

Once you start, you need to understand, once you  start awaking, not only to this but to everything around you, you will see;
it will ... you will feel right. It's ahh ... to me, it has been - I've been into conspiracies and you know; again going through the same people; Alex Jones, whatever, (other people mumble-named) you know, and, uh - from them you take what you feel or think is right and then you leave the rest.

I don't look into conspiracies anymore because I this is it and you need to remember that when you're trying to be awake and you see all these false flags and disasters that are happening all around you; our job once you're awake is just to observe - we observe and we look how the rest of the people react - all these false flags and events that happen around us - they keep happening because of your reaction. Once you stop reacting to them, it will stop, or it will get better.

Anyways I do have a Google community, since it's Google. It's called "Flat Earth 2016". In there, what I do is, I see what's around YouTube and try to get, I posted, short videos, mainly. I mean if they're good and they're longer than I'm gonna put them too of course. I been on it, I did it like a 2 months ago somebody that I almost had like a hundred members which is
telling cool and it's happening and so this is gonna be my two cents probably you won't see me anymore, on a video, and so everyone just take care"

So ...

What are the pertinent points?

[Tom Bishop]

In the fourth paragraph he says most, not all.

And he's talking about shipping of goods, not oil tankers or whatever else might be on those maps.

[Tumeni]

In the fourth paragraph he says most, not all.

And he's talking about shipping of goods, not oil tankers or whatever else might be on those maps.

So all we have is the customer expecting her package to take a direct route from Oakland - Hawaii - Guam (on a cargo flight, presumably), but the package is going Oakland - Alaska - Japan - Guam?

Maybe the scheduled cargo flights on the direct route are less frequent than the second route. Maybe if the flights on the second route hadn't been delayed, it would actually have got there quicker than the scheduled direct route?

Without some data, we're shooting in the dark, and all we have is the loose assertions of a low-level functionary within the organisation....

[rpt]

A quick bit of Googling shows that goods are shipped from Oakland to Guam via Honolulu, both by sea and by air.

Guam is a small place so shipping goods via Japan and Alaska may make economic sense for some shippers.

[TomInAustin]

It's the same concept as airlines.  Shippers use Hubs, track a package on FedEx from Texas to California and it goes through Memphis TN.  No mystery here.

[Tom Bishop]

It's the same concept as airlines.  Shippers use Hubs, track a package on FedEx from Texas to California and it goes through Memphis TN.  No mystery here.

That would still discredit the claims that shipping routes prove RE.

[DuncanDoenitz]

It's the same concept as airlines.  Shippers use Hubs, track a package on FedEx from Texas to California and it goes through Memphis TN.  No mystery here.

That would still discredit the claims that shipping routes prove RE.

The OP claimed that shipping routes discredit RE.  They don't.

[TomInAustin]

It's the same concept as airlines.  Shippers use Hubs, track a package on FedEx from Texas to California and it goes through Memphis TN.  No mystery here.

That would still discredit the claims that shipping routes prove RE.

How does a shipping hub discredit anything?   

[Tom Bishop]

It's the same concept as airlines.  Shippers use Hubs, track a package on FedEx from Texas to California and it goes through Memphis TN.  No mystery here.

That would still discredit the claims that shipping routes prove RE.

How does a shipping hub discredit anything?

It is often claimed that shipping is evidence for an RE. Your explanation contradicts that claim.

[DuncanDoenitz]

I think this thread has been confused from the outset by us discussing different definitions of "shipping". 

My interpretation of the OP was its concern with "shipping"; sending goods by a parcel/freight service using road, rail, air, sea or whatever, (eg DHL, FedEx).  This is typical going to be from consignor to hub, to hub, to consignee.  In this context, shipping (parcel service) is going to depend to some extent on geography, but geographical priorities will be way below the commercial-drivers of politics, population density, location of financial hubs, value of the goods, urgency and differing customs/tax regimes.  This is unlikely to infer much about the shape of things. 

On the other hand, some people have interpreted it as "shipping"; big boats sailing across oceans between seaports, eg Exxon, MSC, Maersk. The decisions about which ports to use are going to be driven by the same commercial-drivers as shipping (parcel service), but once the goods are on a big boat it is just going to take the fastest, safest route from port to port.  These routes are going to say quite a lot about distances, and infer a lot about the shape of the Earth.

[TomInAustin]

It's the same concept as airlines.  Shippers use Hubs, track a package on FedEx from Texas to California and it goes through Memphis TN.  No mystery here.

That would still discredit the claims that shipping routes prove RE.

How does a shipping hub discredit anything?

It is often claimed that shipping is evidence for an RE. Your explanation contradicts that claim.

My example claims that shipping companies use hubs.   How does that condridict or prove anything more than a desperate claim?

[RhesusVX]

I think this thread has been confused from the outset by us discussing different definitions of "shipping". 

My interpretation of the OP was its concern with "shipping"; sending goods by a parcel/freight service using road, rail, air, sea or whatever, (eg DHL, FedEx).  This is typical going to be from consignor to hub, to hub, to consignee.  In this context, shipping (parcel service) is going to depend to some extent on geography, but geographical priorities will be way below the commercial-drivers of politics, population density, location of financial hubs, value of the goods, urgency and differing customs/tax regimes.  This is unlikely to infer much about the shape of things. 

On the other hand, some people have interpreted it as "shipping"; big boats sailing across oceans between seaports, eg Exxon, MSC, Maersk. The decisions about which ports to use are going to be driven by the same commercial-drivers as shipping (parcel service), but once the goods are on a big boat it is just going to take the fastest, safest route from port to port.  These routes are going to say quite a lot about distances, and infer a lot about the shape of the Earth.

Well said, and I completely agree.  If you just look at shipping routes alone, negating all of the reasons why they might go that route, then sure, they say nothing about the shape of the Earth.  However, as you rightly say, once locked and loaded they are going to take the most economically efficient, safest route from port to port (with economical usually meaning fastest).  Those routes are known distances to known locations, and as such they tell you a hell of a lot about the shape of the Earth.

I think it's fair to say that the size, shape, locations, and distances between land masses on Earth is pretty well understood/accepted, even in the absence of observation from space.  Or is it?  Does the flat Earth community dismiss the shape, position and measured distances between land masses as being part of another conspiracy?  All I do know is that the standard Azimuthal Polar Projection map that gets used a lot to represent the flat Earth, quite obviously fails to map the land masses in a way that preserves known distances.  So, if not on a globe, what shape and position are the land masses, what are the distances, and why would ships measure such distances differently to how they do in reality?

[RonJ]

It would be difficult to determine the shape of the earth by the location of the ports or the route the actual cargo travels.  Any ship that doesn't fly the American flag would not be permitted to deliver cargo between two consecutive ports in the United States.  Check out the meaning of the Jones Act.  A Japanese company could pickup cargo in Los Angles and take it to Tokyo and then later on deliver it to Guam.  It wouldn't be the most direct route but it wouldn't violate the Jones Act.  I've been on plenty of ships going between LA --> Honolulu --> Guam delivering cargo but they were always American Flagged vessels.  A port also needs easy access to land routes and deep enough surrounding waters for large ships.  A bridge could also be too low for a large ship to pass under.  These are also considerations that are way more important than the shape of the earth.

Most of the time a ship would take a great circle route between two distant ports.  Even that scenario is often times subverted because of bad weather along the way.  Every once in a while I would be out for 90 days with nothing but calm seas and good weather.  At those times a great circle route was always planned and executed to the delight of the ship's crew and the owners of the cargo.