STEPHEN M GRANT

It seems that because you believe in one conspiracy theory – no matter how ridiculous – you don't necessarily have to buy in to them all. This might perhaps gives those of us with a more realistic view of the world some hope. Perhaps.

 

It transpires that most members of the Flat Earth Society (FES) accept the reality of anthropomorphic climate change. Indeed – it's the society's official position. Who'd a thought it?

 

The BBC recently produced a video entitled 'What's behind denialism' in which flat earthers were thrown into a catch-all bag of denialists including those of holocaust and climate change, and which attempted to understand and explain why people adopted these positions in the first place.

 

The FES were most upset by this. Spokesman Pete Svarrior released a statement which read;
'We have been approached by multiple members of the public and media organisations regarding BBC Ideas' recent video 'What's behind denialism?', specifically the implicit suggestion that the Flat Earth Society has links to climate change or Holocaust deniers.

In response, we have reached out to the BBC who removed our logo from the video to avoid further misleading of the public. The Flat Earth Society, as an entity, prides itself in its commitment to counteracting climate change, and we are glad to see that the BBC has acknowledged their error by altering the material, although we regret the damage that's already been caused.”

 

A further post on Reddit explained “It would be nothing short of irresponsible to question something with so much overwhelming evidence behind it, and something that threatens us so directly as a species."

 

As for the 'overwhelming evidence' demonstrating that the earth is not flat -  well that just doesn't count, it seems. Indeed, on their own site, someone has submitted an unedited video taken using a standard lens with a comparatively narrow field of view – i.e. not wide-angle. This was attached to weather balloon together with a piece of bread on a styrofoam tray, presumably for scale and reference. It ascended to around 35 kilometres, roughly 15.5 miles. Unsurprisingly it shows the curvature of the Earth clearly, even with the narrow view.

 

The resultant posts are an object lesson of denialism in action, from 'obvious barrel distortion' (see below) through to 'The cloudy day they picked makes it impossible to compare the low altitude frames to the high altitude' - as though the images at low altitude were anything to do with it. Perhaps the proverbial biscuit was taken by “Thanks for this, while I don't see curvature, I do see what looks like the molten glass dome covering earth.”

 

So pick from the equipment distorted the image, it was a cloudy day and whilst not seeing what is there, one of them saw something that was not there.  A still taken from the video is above, but if you'd like to take a look yourself, feel free.

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Nota bene

I know a thing or two about lenses and the images they produce, and I'd say that the angle of view was around 45 degrees, suggesting a 50mm lens. This immediately rules out barrel distortion, because this optical error would only occur on something very close to the lens – not far away. The experimenter probably made the presumption that this angle of view would show only a narrow part of the horizon and would therefore would look flat. Indeed earlier in the video (therefore at a lower altitude), the curvature can't really be seen.