To me, the real kickers from Dr. John D's work are ...
1) his video / pictures of the wind turbines, which follow exactly the line of perspective as they get farther away, since the refraction would have to be perfectly consistent over many miles
2) his two-way laser experiment. For the laser to follow the curvature of the earth due to refraction, there would have to be a consistently increasing density along the path of the laser. But that would mean consistently DEcreasing density in the other direction. Both are not possible at the same time with the lasers just being a couple yards apart and at the same elevation.
Tolan also had a terrific video using some sophisticated software that very accurately maps 2D images into 3D using photogrammetry, and he took a long series of his videos and mapped them with this software to a perfectly flat plane.