“Scientists” Sorta Maybe Possibly Link Starfish Die-Offs To Climate Doom

Seriously, this is what they call science, and it actually gets published as news

Scientists Pinpoint Cause of Massive Sea Star Die-Offs, and Suspect a Link to Global Warming

After years of scientific sleuthing, a team of West Coast researchers reported that they have identified a particular strain of ocean bacteria that has killed more than 6 billion sea stars since 2013. In a paper published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, they said the die-off was caused by a type of Vibrio bacteria that was previously only known as a pathogen in some shellfish larvae.

Vibrio bacteria are more frequently causing problems in a warming world. The bacteria sometimes cause dangerous infections and intestinal illnesses in humans, including cholera.

The breakthrough finding will help scientists determine possible conservation or adaptation measures in response to the intensifying consequences of the sea star die-off. Sunflower sea stars, which can grow up to 3 feet across and sprout 24 arms, are critical to West Coast kelp ecosystems, where they devour certain types of sea urchins that can eat through the forests of seaweed if the sea stars don’t check their populations.

I mean, I’ll agree that the die-offs are bad. I just wonder, though, if it could possibly have a different cause, or, did they simply say “anthropogenic climate change”?

Human activities are speeding disruptions in many ecosystems and the rapid expansion of the Vibrio-driven sea star die-off shows how the impacts sometimes outpace scientists’ ability to study them.

The sudden spread of the disease caught scientists off guard, and for many years they suspected a viral pathogen, Gehman said. But researchers didn’t have much information about what the ecosystem was like before the outbreak.

“We didn’t know what was normal for the microbes and bacteria and the viruses in these systems,” she said. “When you don’t have a good idea of what used to be there, it’s hard to find what’s new. And that’s part of why we found the wrong thing for a while was because we found a virus and then it turned out to be a normal virus.”

So, they really do not know much, especially a baseline of what is normal.

“It is possible that warmer water temperatures combined with other ecological and evolutionary factors led to this devastating outbreak and die-off,” she wrote in an email, “but we don’t have that evidence definitively yet.”

So, they really do not know much, but, they’re happy to drag ‘climate change’ into it. I wonder though, has this happened in previous warm periods? Or, when the Earth was much, much warmer and the seas much, much higher?

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