Great Barrier Reef: Is the Earth's biggest living thing really dying?
By Nichole Louchios. Published in the Independent. Thursday 08 November 2018
In recent years, the Great Barrier Reef has grabbed headlines after several people claimed the natural wonder to be dead. In a 2016 article “Obituary: Great Barrier Reef (25 Million BC- 2016)” , writer Rowan Jacobsen pronounced the jewel of the Australian coastline dead after a long illness. “With such extraordinary diversity of life and landscape, it provided some of the most thrilling marine adventures on earth to humans who visited. Its otherworldly colours and patterns will be sorely missed,” writes Jacobsen. “No one knows if a serious effort at the time could have saved the reef, but it is clear that such no effort was made,” writes Jacobsen. Writer Rich Landers of The Spokesman-Review also announced that scientists had pronounced the Great Barrier Reef dead. However, both claims could be misleading: there is a huge difference between ‘dead’ and ‘dying’. The Reef is the world’s largest natural living structure. Covering over 1,429 miles of the Queensland coast, the reef stretches from the north tip of Cape York Peninsula down to the south city of Bundaberg. It is home to over a thousand different types of marine life: 1400 types of hard coral, one third of the world’s soft coral, 1,625 species of fish, over 3000 species of molluscs, 630 types of starfish/sea urchins, 14 species of sea snakes, 215 types of birds, 133 different types of sharks and rays, 30 species of whales and dolphins, six out of seven species of marine turtles, and many species still undiscovered. Due to the colourful marine life, the Reef is also one of the most popular tourist sites for scuba divers visiting Australia. “The Reef supports a huge variety of marine biodiversity and an estimated 69,000 Australian jobs, and provides $7 billion to the Australian economy every year,” reads a report from the Australian Climate Council. With the massive variety of aquatic life both making up and living in the Reef, it is hard to image something so great having such a sudden death. In fact, the damage is not sudden, but is a result of ongoing harm inflicted on the Reef by multiple factors. And the Great Barrier Reef is not dead, but it is dying. According to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, the human influence has caused a 50% decline in the overall coral bed from 1985 to 2012. “The cumulative effect of these threats weakens the Reef’s resilience, affecting its ability to recover from serious disturbances predicted to become more frequent in the future,” writes the foundation. Natural occurrences, such as Cyclone Debbie on 28 March 2017, have also added to the rising damage to the Reef causing breaking and uplifting of the coral. However, these do not account for the intense coral bleaching events that have occurred in recent years. The National Ocean Service defines coral bleaching as the expelling of the symbiotic algae living in the coral’s tissue, resulting in the coral turning completely white. Coral bleaching can occur when the typical summer temperature of local waters increases an exceed maxima by 1°C. C Mark Eakin of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States explains, “Climate has warmed rapidly in the past years, first making El Ninos dangerous for the corals, and now we’re seeing the emergence of the bleaching in every hot summer.” The ocean temperature has increased by about 1 degree Celsius since the 1800s. In 2016, an aerial and underwater survey conducted by the Australian Climate Council revealed that of the 911 reefs surveyed, 81% of the northern sector, 33% of the central sector and 1% of the southern sector experienced severe bleaching. “The current, ongoing mass bleaching event is the worst in the Great Barrier Reef’s history,” reads the report. In 2017, the Australian Climate Council released a second report following the Reef’s second wave of mass coral bleaching. It was the first time in history the Reef experienced two consecutive bleaching occurrences. The council concluded that the warming oceans are a result of the rising temperatures caused by the burning of coal, oil and gas. “Human activities, primarily the emission of greenhouse gases from the combustion of fossil fuels, are driving climate change,” states the council. “Climate change is the greatest threat to the Great Barrier Reef.” The back-to-back bleaching events in 2016 and 2017 has sent the Reef in a downward decline leaving parts of the coral beds completely unsalvageable. According to a briefing released by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the events in 2016 and 2017 increased the percentage of dead coral from 22% to 29% with an anticipated morality rate of 19%. UNESCO has criticised the Australian Government for not taking greater steps to preserve the Reef since it was placed on their watch list in 2015. As a result, the Australian Government adopted the Reef 2015 Plan, a $100 million project which looked to improve the water quality on the Reef. However, in 2017, the government declared the project impossible and leaving the plan to be reviewed sometime in 2018. “Meanwhile, the Australian Government continues to heavily subsidies the fossil fuel industry and is considering a loan of up to $1 billion to facilitate the construction of the Carmichael coal megamine,” writes UNESCO. The Reef’s only chance for salvation sits with the Australian Government. Government funding for new fossil fuel mining must come to a halt, the Reef 2050 Plan needs to be rewritten, and the country should adopt a climate change policy that would reduce the emission levels by 40-60% followed by 60-80%. Otherwise, the health of the Reef will continue to decline until it eventually stops dying and is officially declared dead.
Sheffield church moves to increase accessibility for disabled parishioners.
By Nichole Louchios.
A church plans to update the parish by pushing forward on their effort to make the church more handicap accessible. Christ Church Fulwood has submitted a planning application for new lifts for the church’s main reception building to create easier accessibility for disabled parishioners. Fiona Lockwood, the parish’s Premises Manager, has overseen the outlining of the planning application. “It’s been a long process. The diocese is very careful with any changes that are made to their buildings to make sure they are in keeping with the building,” said Lockwood. She added: “The application, however, was pretty straight forward because it is something that we really need.” The new lifts would be an improvement to the church’s current conditions by reducing stairway traffic and creating easier access to the buildings restroom facilities. “The site is a complex one because we have so many different levels,” said Lockwood. Current features include two automatic chair lift that operate within the main building. The current chair lifts fail to give required help to parishioners with significant disabilities. The chairs limit users but only granting them access to the first and second floor in the four story building. “That’s why a lift is the only way to ensure they can access all floors,” says Lockwood. Christ Church Fulwood welcomes hundreds of community members to a variety of events on a daily basis. “On a Sunday, we would usually have about 900 people come through the doors. But the site is also seven days a week and we have meeting for all ages at morning, noon, and nights. So the lift to give them access during these event,” says Lockwood. The official planning application was submitted by DLP Planning Sheffield earlier last month. The lifts will cut into the empty wall space to the right of the staircase. Construction is hoped to begin early next summer.
From the Stadium to the Streets.
By Nichole Louchios.
In the 1970s, photographers Tod Papageorge, Geoff Winningham and Garry Winogrand walked the streets of New York City, capturing the images of common people who reflected society. From high school football games to families enjoying the summer, these men caught the moments on film that incorporated big picture moments from the world. Skip forward nearly five decades, Thom Sempere, executive director of PhotoAlliance in San Francisco, California, revisited these moments to connect the social importance of street photography in the 1970s in the final public program for the Scrimmage exhibition on Wednesday night at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. Sempere looked back through history to reveal the intertwining themes that photographs have with each other and how they reflected the world during that period of time. When comparing Papageorge’s photograph of a crowd lifting people into the air at a football game to Joe Rosenthal’s Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, he showed the link between the crowd’s actions of lifting up its audience members and the action of the soldiers in the war photo lifting the flag. Above all, he moved to connect the cultural significance of 1970s photography to greater events like the Vietnam War, the war protest and the realism of human relationships. “The streets were the stage and its people were the actors, performers, and dancers,” he said. “Pictures have a way of speaking to each other as well.” Sempere explained that even if photos were not taken at the same time, there was still have a mysterious way of reaching out to each other. Sempere presented a timeline of photos that showed the connecting themes of photography, starting with the invention of the camera and ending with the 1970s. “Photographers go wherever there are people to be photographed,” Sempere said as he scanned through Timothy H. O’Sullivan’s photographs of fallen soldiers from the Civil War. He explained that photographs are all connected with each other and the rest of the world. As Sempere continued along with the slides, the street photographs began to show similar in the moments that were captured. Photos of families enjoying a summer on the beach at Coney Island in the early 1900s appeared almost identical to photos of families at the beach during the 1970s. A photograph of a couple wearing matching flannels against a fence in Central Park Zoo was pointed out for appearing as if it had been taken recently. “This one could have been taken last week,” Sempere said. As he moved through the history of street photography, Sempere began to bring the conversation back to the focus of Tod Papageorge, Geoff Winningham, and Garry Winogrand. Their photographs were mainly of men and woman walking the streets in New York exchanging smiles, or protest and rallies against the Vietnam War. Sempere credited Tod Papageorge and Garry Winogrand in particular for incorporating social issues into their photos, calling it symbolic. “You can almost transport yourself into a clash of signs or a class of cultures,” he claims when looking at the tension present in Papageorge’s photos of a Vietnam War riot in New York. “And that brings us back home again,” Sempere exclaimed as he brought the program to an end. Gillian George, a sophomore at the University of Oregon, described the lecture as an opportunity she was happy to take advantage of. “I am a photo journalism major and I was not familiar with half of the stuff in there. Ya, I mean it’s really cool being able to learn stuff like this outside of the classroom.”
Thinking Beyond the Upset.
By Nichole Louchios.
Thinking Beyond the Upset.
By Nichole Louchios.
After the surprising outcome of the presidential election on Nov. 8, journalists and faculty in the School of Journalism and Communications have been trying to answer the question of just how Donald Trump managed to come out on top. And it left them wondering how they could help better prepare their students for the future that will come with the new president-elect. This is why Regina Lawrence, executive director of the SOJC’s Agora Journalism Center, led the final discussion of Demystifying the Media series on Monday. Lawrence explained that the results came as a shock to several Americans and it was an upset for nearly half of the electoral college. Faculty and staff brainstormed ideas of how teachers could aid and concerns students may have about the repercussions for the future. But overall, more questions were asked that answered about the mistakes journalists during the 2016 Presidential Election. “A good majority of journalist are wondering how they missed the story that was clearing developing right under our eyes,” she said. “Maybe the media didn’t have an effect on the election at all.” She explained that the upset of the election has a lot of people wondering exactly how journalist should go about covering politics, democracy and society in the future. The lecture was help by the SOJC on Monday in the EMU’s Diamond Lake Room for all students and faculty, the week following the 2016 Presidential Election results. Lawrence titled the discussion Beyond the Upset: What We Can Learn from the Election 2016. The series served as a space for the SOJC community to come together and discuss current events that are effecting the industry. Attendees raised more questions than answers when analyzing what the SOJC could do to assist the students during these changing times. Breaking the discussion up into three different sections, Lawrence asked attendees to reflect on questions that implicated opportunities for improvement on curriculum, research and teaching. peaking on behalf of the research group, journalism faculty member Seth Lewis brought up the question of social media outlets and if they had a bigger impact on the election that the public knew. He elaborated that it is important to look at the way information moves online even though we are granted little access to this data. Pointing out the minimal information released by Facebook, Lewis jokingly exclaimed, “All the things we would do if Facebook gave us their data.” The discussion switched over to the group reviewing curriculum. They spoke collectively on the need for the SOJC to update the curriculum for journalism students. The group suggested that students should go out and interview people who challenge their values and force then to step out of their comfort zone. They expressed the need for students to be challenged to cover stories that oppose their opinions and values. The rest of the room agreed. A major issue pointed out by several professors was that Journalism is the only undergraduate major in the SOJC that doesn’t have a principles course. A principles course in an overview of a certain practice in a diverse global society, including theory, career opportunities, history, communication forms and channels, and legal and ethical concerns. This knowledge was new information for several people in the room. The discussion came to an end with the topic of teaching and resources. Lawrence asked the faculty and staff what they felt they could do to serve the students now and in the future with the topics of media literacy and navigating students to reliable sources arising. Public relations instructor Kathryn Kuttis explained that students are often looking to the teachers for legitimate sources. Kuttis added, “42 percent of people get their news from Facebook. So where are we telling our students to go and get their information? What are we saying to do besides, ‘go look at Facebook?’” She continued, “There is no SOJC list saying, ‘these are the places where you should be getting your news.’” The group then suggested that teachers be trained to become more active listeners in the classroom in order to make students feel more comfortable to talk about the current events. It was concluded that the even if Donald Trump had lost the election, journalist would still be scrambling to figure out how they failed to predict such a close race. Hopefully these changes will not go unheard because drastic changes in the media are to be expected with the presidency of Donald J. Trump.
Elements of the Debate.
By Nichole Louchios.
A public relations assistant professor, Autumn Shafer, spoke next about traditional strategies the candidates were expected to use while giving her predictions for the debate. The experienced political campaign manager talked about the preparation of the candidates and their teams. “Republicans historically are more prone to talk about values, about a larger world vision and sort of rules and boundaries as they present their positions. As where Democrats are more likely to quote stats or give list of policies,” explained Shafer Shafer discussed the importance of social media during the debate. She credited social media for giving viewers a better understanding of the debate and encouraging users online to watch the debate. Shafer explained that political reporters know the historical and social context of the debate topics. She noted that these journalists identify key elements before a political speech then follow along during the event to note any similarities or major differences in order to make deadlines. Lori Shontz, a journalism instructor with more than two decades of experience as a writer and editor, closed off the discussion panel by giving the audience a sense of what covering the debate is like for a journalist. She said, “The ones who are reporting this and are on the beat all the time, know the kind of stuff that Autumn is telling you.” Shontz stressed the fact checker as a crucial tool during the debates because reporting what candidate A and B said is no longer enough. People want to know if what they are saying is true or false. Journalists need to know if the information is true before deadline. Lori Shontz ended the night asking, “Are you reporting what happened or what it means.” Melissa Campolo, a junior geography major in attendance, had this to say of the forum, “I honestly didn’t realize how much work goes into preparing and covering these debates. Like, I never really thought about the history behind the debate and I didn’t know how crazy it is for journalist. I’m not even a journalism major and I felt like everything they talked about was important information.”