[N0b8ez]

> The changing climate killed more, but the humans were the differentiating factor, so which one do you point the finger at?

If we're the differentiating factor, I'd have to blame us. Am I right in understanding that these species were normally being thinned during each glacial maxima, such that it was already a set part of their evolutionary environment? If that's right, then aren't we the ones to blame?

Otherwise, is a murderer merely a "contributing cause" to someone's death if the victim happens to be sick at the time of the killing?

[strken]

I think there's a good argument that either or both factors contributed. We tend to blame people because they have agency and the natural world does not, and that's not a bad way to understand things.

My main point was that I don't think it would be denialism for someone to say "no, the species was pushed to the brink by climate change anyway, we know other species went extinct prior to human colonisation, and even though humans arguably made it worse there's no conclusive evidence". Glacial maxima are hundreds of thousands of years apart and given the timescales involved it's hard to say whether a species is adapted to them or whether it just got lucky.

[N0b8ez]

Weren't there something like 5 glacial maxima in the past 200 thousand years? I had the impression they were more regularly occurring than "hundreds of thouands of years apart".