BBC’s Fake Victoria Falls Report
By Paul Homewood
h/t MrGrimNasty
Yet more disgracefully misleading propaganda from the BBC:
In our monthly feature, Then and Now, we reveal some of the ways that planet Earth has been changing against the backdrop of a warming world. Here, we look at the effects of global heating on Victoria Falls, one of the natural wonders of the world – and how Sub-Saharan Africa is learning to cope with the climate crisis.
In full flow, Victoria Falls easily qualifies as one of the natural wonders of the world. Spanning 1.7km at its widest point and with a height of more than 100m, locals refer to Africa’s greatest waterfall as "the smoke that thunders".
This amazing feature is formed as the Zambezi river plunges into a chasm called the First Gorge. The chasm was carved by the action of water along a natural fracture zone in the volcanic rock that makes up the landscape in this region of southern Africa
In 2019, however, Victoria Falls was silenced.
In a drought described as the worst in a century, the flow of the Zambezi was reduced to a relative trickle and the Falls ran dry.
As one of the region’s biggest attractions for tourists, Victoria Falls is a valuable source of income for Zimbabwe and Zambia. As news of the low waters spread, local traders noticed a visible drop in tourist numbers.
As well as hitting the countries’ economies, it also hit electricity supplies, which are dependent on hydroelectric generation.
More widely across the region, agencies reported an increase in the need for food aid, as crops failed in the drought.
A single extreme weather event cannot, in isolation, be viewed as a consequence of climate change.
But the region is recording a sequence of extreme droughts that reflect what climate modellers have predicted will occur as a result of an increase in greenhouse gases in the world’s atmosphere as a result of human activity.
Zambia’s President, Edgar Lungu – speaking at the time – called it "a stark reminder of what climate change is doing to our environment".
The UN’s State of the Climate in Africa in 2019 report painted a worrying picture for a continent that could see its population double over the coming century.
Speaking at the report’s launch in October 2020, World Meteorological Organization secretary-general Petteri Taalas observed: "Climate change is having a growing impact on the African continent, hitting the most vulnerable hardest, and contributing to food insecurity, population displacement and stress on water resources.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-56902340
It may have been “described” as the worst drought in a century, but it most assuredly was not, as I reported at the time, when the BBC made the same propaganda a year ago. In fact, the Zambian side of the Victoria Falls, the eastern, always dries up like this in the dry season, October – December. This is because the Eastern Cataract is at a higher elevation than the other side.
But take a look at that split image above- notice how the BBC compares JANUARY 2019 with DECEMBER 2019.Why not compare December with December.The BBC clearly want you to think that the Falls have gone from spate to drought in the space of one year because of climate change.
To get the full account of what happens there, we can consult The Lonely Planet, who to their credit make it their job to understand what is happening at ground level in the places they write about. Note this was written in December 2019, shortly after the original BBC report:
Eyes around the world have turned to Victoria Falls as recent reports that droughts in southern Africa and warming global temperatures have caused the famous cascade to “shrink to a trickle."
But local authorities insist that, while water levels are far from their peak, Mosi-oa-Tunya (the Smoke that Thunders) is alive and well – and shows no immediate signs of vanishing. With an end to the annual dry season just around the corner, what is really going on at Victoria Falls?
An aerial photo on 9 December shows the level of water flow going over the main cascade at Victoria Falls © courtesy of the Zambezi Helicopter Company / Lonely Planet
Hundreds of thousands of years before a Scottish explorer named Dr. Livingston christened the falls in honour of Queen Victoria in 1855, gentle flows of volcanic lava spread out across southern Africa like honey poured onto a cookie sheet. Those minor eruptions formed a relatively flat stretch of basalt along a high plateau in parts of what are now the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Zimbabwe, and Zambia. Eventually, the massive Zambezi River cut through cracks in that basalt, forming deep gouges like the Bakota Gorge into which the falls spill today.
Like Niagara Falls, Victoria Falls sits on the border between two countries – Zimbabwe and Zambia. You’ve likely seen photos of the western, Zimbabwean side of the falls where the lion’s share of the Zambezi’s water flow spills over. Many of the recently circulated shots of the supposedly bone-dry Victoria Falls were snapped of the Eastern Cataract on the Zambian side, which sits at a higher elevation and regularly dries up for a few months each year – a phenomenon called “Victoria Walls.”
“Every single year the Eastern Cataract of the Victoria Falls exposes a dry rock face, normally between the months of October to December,” explains Wilma Griffith, a marketing executive at the Wild Horizons Lookout Café, a restaurant overlooking the Batoka Gorge. “Historical figures show that on or around 14 November the river is at its lowest and then gradually starts to rise again around 14 December, once the localised rains start having an impact on the Zambezi.”
November and December are the end of spring and the beginning of summer in the southern hemisphere, but it can take time for the post-winter rainfall in the DRC and Angola to travel downstream to Victoria Falls, and eventually to in the Indian Ocean. Those familiar with the Zambezi say the annual dry season is already coming to an end. “The water levels are changing,” says Warren Ncube of the Zambezi Helicopter Company, “and with the rains we will soon have a full flood.”
According to the Zambezi River Authority, the flow at Victoria Falls can be as much as 10,000 cubic metres per second (recorded during an especially wet March in 1958), or as low as 390 cubic mps (recorded during the drought of 1995), while the long term annual mean is about 1100 cubic mps. Most recently, the flow has been 252 cubic mps – low, but still higher than this time last year, when Zimbabwe was experiencing a drought.
https://www.lonelyplanet.com/articles/victoria-falls-drought-climate-change
Let’s recap my highlighted text:
- The Eastern Cataract dries up every year between October and December
- Because of summer rainfall up stream, there is always a big rise in lake levels in January.
- Although lower than average, the flow rate in December was MORE than in December 2018.
That is why the BBC fraudulently used January 2019 as the comparison, and not December 2018.
The Zambesi River Authority confirms that the 2019/20 curve (purple) was not at a record low in 2019, and that flow rates always rise sharply in January. The highest flow rates were in 1968/69:
http://www.zambezira.org/hydrology/river-flows
Finally, let’s look at the implication that crops have failed because of climate change induced drought. The chart below runs up to 2019, and shows a decline in cereal yields in 2018 and 2019. However, similar drops in yield have occurred many times in the past. There is no evidence of any impact from “climate change”:
http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#compare
FOOTNOTE
This report on Victoria Falls is the second in a monthly series by the BBC. The first, you may recall, was about the “megadrought” in California, which was also full of misleading claims, and on which I have filed a complaint to them:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-56902340
FOOTNOTE II
This is from Zimbabwe Tourism – Dec 2019:
Historical data provided by the Zambezi River Authority, who monitors the water level flows in the region daily, provide evidence that the annual mean water levels of the river have in fact been lower in at least six prior examples of a period spanning 1914 to the current date period.
Whilst Zimbabwe has indeed experienced an extensive drought over the course of this year, the water levels of the Zambezi and indeed the flow levels over Victoria Falls, have remained above those recorded over the drought period of 95 / 96.
https://www.zimbabwetourism.net/news-update-on-the-state-of-vic-falls/
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
BBC so stupid they can’t work out that “worst in a century” is clearly (a) not unprecedented and (b) it was worse before AGW became a thing.
Too stupid for words. If it was worse before climate change, what’s to worry about?
Total bozos the lot of them, so stupid they can’t see their own logical fallacy.
Unfortunately, TS, many in their audience are just as stupid. I am willing to bet that this report is on many school curricula.
It is worse than stupidity, it is calculated propaganda designed to instill fright and compliance. When you spend decades not educating the population properly they will fall for this stuff. It is a lack of knowledge.
I have often said that a semester of paleobotany would clear up the notion that climate change is a new thing and brought about by man.
We are dealing with the results of the lack of knowledge perpetrated by people whose intent is pure evil.
There is no ‘intent’, it is just bandwagoning. People join the bandwagon for fame and money. After a while so many people have personal capital invested in it that they cannot question it, cannot allow it to be questioned. The bandwagon first becomes accepted ‘fact’, then a religion. But always a next generation comes along and says ‘Bollocks!’, then it gets painful, accusatory and nasty.
If you really think that there is no “intent” I suggest that you read the UN Agenda 21, 30 and Sustainability along with the Davos WEF “Great Reset”
AC Osborn–
Thank you
Perhaps Tim Davie should look closer to home when complaining about the ‘growing assault on truth’ which ‘poses a threat to societies and democracies around the world.’ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9536075/BBC-chiefs-warning-growing-assault-truth-calls-solidarity-journalists.html
I laughed when I saw that this morning.
Oh my, definitely Through the Looking Glass level projection.
I disagree, TS. The BBC are well aware of the fraudulent claims they are making, and are continuing to make. The stupid bozos are the tens of thousands who swallow this hogwash and then hitch their wagons to the “Catastrophic Climate Change” claim without thinking to question the narrative. Useful idiots, I believe is the term. The BBC is the enemy of the truth.
Maybe, but I subscribe to Hanlon’s maxim:
“never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”
Such is socialism
Ignorance is no excuse: BBC is supposed to be the gold standard, and I expect its reporters to exercise their critical thinking skills and to fact check their own stories before they click send.
We have reached a point where people believe that climate change has accomplished things that are either obviously impossible or can be shown false with five minutes of searching the internet for history or data. People will believe, without a flicker, that Victoria Falls has dried up thanks to climate change. They would probably believe the same about Niagara Falls if you told them with a straight face.
Jit,
“Ignorance is no excuse: BBC is supposed to be the gold standard, and I expect its reporters to exercise their critical thinking skills and to fact check their own stories before they click send.”
The BBC knows what they are doing and are not ignorant of what it is and how it works. They are the ‘gold standard’ in propagating stories that will assist with instilling fear and confusion on so many of the population.
No chance of the BBC’s climate squad drying up.
If at first you don’t deceive,
try, try it on again.
The BBC stopped being the gold standard around the mid 80s; about the same time they started employing ‘journalists’ who couldn’t spell critical thinking; let alone employ it
‘According to the Zambezi River Authority, the flow at Victoria Falls can be as much as 10,000 cubic metres per second (recorded during an especially wet March in 1958), or as low as 390 cubic mps (recorded during the drought of 1995), while the long term annual mean is about 1100 cubic mps. Most recently, the flow has been 252 cubic mps – low, but still higher than this time last year, when Zimbabwe was experiencing a drought.’
Paul, there seems to be something odd with these figures.If the flow has been ‘as low as 390 cubic mps’, then the recent figure of 253 cubic mps is surely exceptional?
Today’s flow (3 May) on the ZRA site = 2745 m3/s: http://www.zambezira.org/hydrology/river-flows
Yes, that’s odd – they may have got the numbers crossed – I’ll check further
I’ve found this from the ZRA:
“The hydrometric network used for the control and day to day operations of the Kariba reservoir comprise of thirteen stations where water levels are monitored daily. Flow measurements are carried out at eight of these stations which include the Victoria Falls, one of the key stations on the Zambezi River. Coincidentally, the maximum flow recorded at Victoria Falls was during the early construction phase of Kariba Dam in March 1958 at 10,000 cubic metres per second. The lowest flows recorded to date at Victoria Falls were during the 1995/96 season which had an annual mean flow of 390 cubic metres per second, whereas the Long Term Mean Annual flow at Victoria Falls is 1,100 cubic metres per second.”
http://www.zambezira.org/hydrology/river-flows
It may be that the 252 cmps is at another location.
Also a pertinent 2020 appraisal from IUCN World Heritage Outlook “good with some concerns2” re the Zambian side of the Falls: https://worldheritageoutlook.iucn.org/node/1037
390 is an annul mean flow while 253 is at a particular time during the dry season.
No wonder the BBC sold Lonely Planet in 2013 – it didn’t fit their climate warming propaganda!
I agree with Joan Gibson, (I’d need more that one semester to understand any botany tho’).
What does really disgust me is that the BBC even when caught out in its disingenuous ways, does no more than post a miniscule postscript. The lack of meja debate of the real science of climate and weather is another disgrace: total attempted brainwashing of the populace to believe their “betters”.
You should see the flow right now, today, it is full enough to rattle the stone eggs in the cabinet on the verandah at the Victoria Falls Hotel and that doesn’t happen every year I can tell you.
I remember the mournful documentary SKY did with Alex Crawford telling us the very low flow was the new normal and all was lost. It’s almost as though the News Industry meet among themselves to agree on which bit of propaganda they will push this week.
Critical thinking is no longer taught by the grubby communists who infest our schools and universities and the reason is to make the acceptance of obvious lies easier for the hypnotised.
There is a wonderful article on iceagenow that recounts life in France with a Hyundai Kona battery car. You can’t help but laugh at his comment that you could only charge it up while not cooking or switching the kettle on or the fuses blow. I hadn’t heard about the spate of burning batteries.
Yes, he was of course reporting on Jonathan Miller’s article in the Speccie a few days ago.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-i-regret-buying-an-electric-car
The battery fires are rather shocking. I saw a video from a security camera a few weeks back where a car (not a Hyundai) that was on charge exploded into fire and burned out. The vehicle was in a public area and the fire spread to the vehicle parked next to it.
Not surprised. I lived near Milan in 2006. Every time I had the kettle on and added a second electrical appliance the breaker would trip requiring an arduous walk to the basement without lights. Seems that higher amp levels breakers can be purchased for higher kWhr charge but as a foreigner I had no idea.
The need for the word “heating” says it all.
Correct. It’s so egregious an exaggeration it can only be described as an outright lye.
“Zambia’s President, Edgar Lungu – speaking at the time – called it “a stark reminder of what climate change is doing to our environment”.
The UN’s State of the Climate in Africa in 2019 report painted a worrying picture for a continent that could see its population double over the coming century.
Speaking at the report’s launch in October 2020, World Meteorological Organization secretary-general Petteri Taalas observed: “Climate change is having a growing impact on the African continent, hitting the most vulnerable hardest, and contributing to food insecurity, population displacement and stress on water resources.”
Another “stark” and scary reminder? So, the solution is what? Lower the population or lower CO2 emissions? The latter can only make the situation worse. And it will have no impact on the climate as that takes no CO2 from the atmosphere to lower the global temperature (assuming of course that CO2 is actually the “control knob”).
The fashion for doing 100 things is catching on. I was thinking of publishing 100 BBC lies about climate.
I hope no-one on this site who lives in the UK still pays the BBC licence tax. Hit them where it hurts and dont pay for propaganda..
With everything on demand now there is little need for a TV licence and if you come up against an awkward question on iplayer ask yourself ‘what would Boris do?’. Lie of course!
Whilst we mustn’t condone breaking the law on this site, even if it is to do with decorating a flat, if you do watch without a licence have the common sense not to have your TV visible from outside…..
Accidently switched on to the BBC the other day. Straight away it was all the old rhetoric about global warming , floods, droughts, melting ice and all the other nonsense. It’s now so far removed from reality it’s a wonder somebody hasn’t blown the whistle on it and pulled the plug. It’s insulting to have to keep paying for this same old garbage.
Global ‘heating’!!
They had to exaggerate the claim – going from ‘warming’ to ‘heating’ (not to mention ’emergency’) because they know that there is a cooler (say, ‘cold’) period in play right now, which could last for tens of years. They worry that if their audience cottons on to this they – the BBC – will be rumbled: they have to keep the panic going for their political aims.
Harry. What we are witnessing is improvised theater, just without the brilliant and sadly missed John Sessions. As what we are being presented with is invention is it any surprise that the language used is unstable and subject to “inflation”?
Activists and wannabe activist 12 year old reporters want to be the first to coin the new sensational term to achieve common usage to achieve their moment of fame. Science is now just a word as are all the inflationary terms used to challenge it. I have been told when quoting from the scientific literature by a woman heading up a group called Science Mums or Mums for Science that polar bears do not care about “my science”. Also when a person gets wind that as a scientist I have worked in the oil industry, automatically they get the vapors and feel that gives them the right to dismiss any empirical data based research I may quote as tainted.
Pseudo credentials are also commonly used as if they give authority and immunity from challenge. The BBC is well versed in informing us of what are clearly just opinions yet calling it science. They also like to back their op-eds with quotes from a “professor” who has said this or that without bothering to tell us what the professors basis for being quoted as an authority is.
There is a lot of bigging up in the system. I constantly question what terms mean and invariably there is silence because the user has no clue themselves, using them only because they feel they are power terms and a demonstration of their credentials as a card carrying supporters of the cause.
Around the invented term “zero carbon” we are also informed about “carbon positive” and “carbon negative” as well as “carbon neutral”. This same invented language is applied to climate. You can read about “climate positive” as well as “climate negative”, “climate neutral” and incredibly also “stopping climate change” and even more asinine “reversing climate change” ( perhaps that mean next stop The Little Ice Age MkII)?
When I recently questioned someone about what “Energy Equity” meant I was not given an answer to my question but told by the person using it that he had a PhD and followed a “Nobel lecturer” whatever that means.
Buzzword Bingo was invented to try and shame those using jargon to decist.
What we are witnessing is the vocabulary of the obsequie flunkies trying to outdo each other in praise for the Emperors Clothes. I am slowly building a reference set of these meaningless virtue signaling terms which one day I will post all together to shine light on just how absurd they make the people using them look.
Well said Sir. My Biochemistry Professor, in the late 1960s, said that if anybody suggested there was a ‘scientific consensus’ it meant that they were trying to put their hand in your wallet. Nothing has changed since then to make me disagree with this wisdom!
David V PERMALINK
May 3, 2021 2:02 pm
390 is an annul mean flow while 253 is at a particular time during the dry season.
Don’t think so David. Only the 1100 cubic mps is an annual figure. Looking at the graph, I think they just dropped a 1 off the front of the figure.
The BBC ten o’clock news last night had a propaganda piece about COP26, presented by Shukman who was holding a lump of coal. As far as I could tell, it had no justification as a news item. It was activism, pure and simple as one might expect from Extinction Rebellion or Greenpeace. The BBC abuses its position as a broadcaster by presenting it as a news item in the middle of the evening news bulletin.
The Corporation is engaging in its campaign to frighten the public with alarmism and brainwash people into changing their way of life. None of that can masquerade as genuine news.
I fully expect to see the BBC roll out this propaganda in future news bulletins between now and COP. I urge everyone to make their complaints as strong as possible all the way to Ofcom.
Apparently the falls also ran dry in 1914/15 before man made ‘global heating’ became a thing. How inconvenient of Mother Nature to drain the falls without any help from man whatsoever.
All of the above-I concur.To 2hmp above comment;I thought the same thing.I intend to dig back thru. Pauls collection of BBC nonsense,and send a good selection off to the new chairman.
A reply from him,if he bothers,should be interesting..
Perhaps we should run a sweepstake on which old story the BBC will regurgitate next with false details. I’m sure they’ve got it all planned out in advance – they have to keep the flow going right through COP 26.
In fact, we probably need a chart on the flow of stories. Instead of cumecs, measure it in words per day. I’m sure they’d be over 10,000 already on several days. Be nice to see an occasional drought though…
Another day, more BBC propaganda. You can see from Google how quickly news networks and climate sites/activists all over the world are spreading this story.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09fh05l
“This video is part of Project 17, a BBC World Service series produced in partnership with the Open University, in which 17-year-olds look at progress on the UN’s 17 goals.”
When did naive brainwashed 17yo kids get to be judge and jury and when did democracy get a say in the UN’s goals (essentially governing us) anyway?
‘Hereiti, 17, lives on Rarotonga, the largest of the Cook Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. She says the ocean is the “lifeblood” of her community, and that when it is “healthy”, the people are too. But she worries that rising sea levels and pollution are threatening the health of the ocean.’
For a starters, tide gauge data seems to show sea level has been falling slowly for the last 20 years.
This document has an extensive description of the Cook Islands and well worth a read to get the full picture. ***https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/natc/cisnc2.pdf***
Of course it is loaded with (mostly future supposed) climate change impacts (increased storm intensity etc.), but the coastal issue, if it is one, is not climate related, but down to a mix of man’s activities and nature.
“Coastal erosion is already evident in many areas of the main island Rarotonga. This can be directly linked to a decline in health of the reef system as well as activities such as removal of coastal vegetation, the blasting of reef channels and poorly constructed sea walls.” “The shoreline of all the islands of the Cook Islands is very dynamic……”
Only about 1000 years ago:- “Geoarchaeological studies on Aitutaki, southern Cook Islands, suggest sea-level fall coincident with the period of human occupation. The coastal beach barrier which formed along Aitutaki’s central western coast after sea-level fall became the focus of human habitation over the last millennium.”
This is not an issue of man-made climate change, it is just stupid people expecting all natural change to stop combined with land use change/modification.
Grim – In the BiasedBBC forum, I posted a link to your comment here
If you like you like you can post your whole comment there too.
It’s probably useful to direct back to this site, and I already post in too many places/waste too much time.
Too late to get widely seen on the ‘Glaciers shrunk’ story, so I’ll bomb it in here too!
https://notrickszone.com/2021/05/03/tree-remains-found-buried-beneath-todays-glaciers-date-to-the-warmer-than-today-medieval-warm-period/
Reblogged this on WeatherAction News and commented:
I had a rather good discussion with the late Dr Waheed Uddin, David Birch and Carlos Ramirez amongst others on this topic back in November 2019. As always history doesn’t support the narrative. Sadly some of the tweets are missing as they have either been deleted by Twitter’s overcensorious ban hammer or the user.
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
In 2019 both the BBC’s Stephen Sackur and Sky News’s Alex Crawford filed stories about the imminent drying-up of the Victoria Falls because of climate change which were taken up and published prominently by the usual suspects. A local resident at Victoria Falls posted two photographs on social media of Stephen Sackur recording his show. The first was taken from the same angle used by the BBC’s camera which was carefully sited to show Mr Sackur with a back-drop of a section of the Falls over which no water was flowing – an impressively waterless wall of rock. The photographer then moved about ten metres to the right and took a second photograph of Sackur standing in exactly the same place, but now with the Devil’s Cataract section of the Falls with a considerable amount of water flowing over it behind him, a perspective which was never shown on the BBC. These two photographs illustrate perfectly the misinformation being imparted.
If the reporters filing these stories had spoken to local residents, which they both did, and/or if either of them had taken even the most cursory look at the records of water-flow at the Victoria Falls going back over 100 years, which one would expect that if they were even half-way competent journalists they would have done, they had to know that:
1. the level of the Zambezi displays considerable seasonal fluctuation, and there are certain sections of the Victoria Falls which have no water flowing over them every year during the low water season;
2. while the low water level in 2019 was lower than average (which is why we have averages, because some years are higher or lower than others) it was by no means the lowest recorded – there were lower years in 1921/22, 1991/92, 1948/49, 1914/15, 1994/95 and 1995/96, and flows in 1915/16 and 1918/19 were within less than 1%;
3. the flow in 2017/18 was among the highest recorded; and
4. at its lowest the flow in 2019 was higher than the lowest flow the previous year.
All the above shows very clearly that there is no diminishing trend, yet none of these facts were mentioned by any of these journalists – they went right ahead and reported that the mighty Victoria Falls is drying up because of climate change, even though they had to know that this is not true.
Sorry one error above – the flow in 2019/20 was not higher than the previous year.
They really are not bothered about facts, it’s the headline that counts. The same things are
re-cycled over and over again. Successful advertising relies on it:
https://assemblo.com/blog/repetition-is-key-why-frequency-makes-your-marketing-effective/
“Studies have shown that people need to see a message at least seven times before it sinks in.
It supports the notion that people learn, and therefore remember, by repetition.
This same principal can be applied to marketing activity – the more messages that are out there, the more people are likely to recognise your brand’s presence, leading to trust and sales.
This is not a new piece of information – we often talk about the importance of having a marketing mix.
And in today’s digital environment, where multiple channels like your website, social media, video and online advertising can all work together to share the same message, makes it even easier for repetition to be part of your marketing strategy.”
Surely I am not the only one who knows that the Victoria Falls power station, built in approximately 1969, draws it’s water from a point just above the point shown in the supposedly dry falls picture. That’s one of the main reasons that that part of the falls appear dry during the dry season.