and why is it an important issue? In part because of the ecological stresses it causes, which results in less supply of resources in a given ecological niche.
Seems entirely reasonable to hypothesise the cause of aggression being related to this. That's not something they tested, merely a proposed hypothesis.
It's a convenient hypothesis, given the ubiquity of climate change impacts, but also a lazy one, like blaming the aggression on something equally as prevalent and relevant to the situation, like chimp genetics. The hypothesis is untestable absent some other specific assertions, and therefore unscientific.
And you have enough knowledge on the subject matter so this can be seen as an educated guess, or are you just throwing some good-knowing words around to see what sticks?
Testability and a better understanding of how resource limitations impact intraspecific competition is one of the big questions of community ecology.
Sorry, sometimes the convenient hypothesis is a good one. It's just hard to test, since we cannot spin up Earth 2. That's one of the hard parts of ecology.
climate change is having wide and radically accelerating impacts. I'm certain the scientists have good insights into why it might be a factor in this event. much more concerning is the knee-jerk ignorance about climate change among lay audiences who are repeatedly putting their hands over their eyes and ears.
The two are connected. Scientists lying about climate change, especially in obvious contexts like this one, makes people see that scientists are not to be trusted.
NY Times has been running a series of articles blaming every fire and extreme weather event on climate change. This does two things:
1. Convinces liberals of the coming apocalypse of climate change, since it aligns with their views.
2. Convinces conservatives that the climate change folks are lying, since there are several logical steps missing, and it doesn't align with their views.
I'm sure some of those events are related to climate change. I'm sure some aren't. I don't think we really know which is which.
The problem with using (transparently) bad logic to get to a correct conclusion is that people no longer trust you.
If you look at conservative media, they point to (now obviously wrong) predictions from the eighties, where citations and reporting would go to the most extreme predictions.
It's really hard to convince someone of something after they've been lied to multiple times.
