Oh yeah I’m not disputing those facts at all, just saying that there’s got to be some reason trash pandas haven’t wound up here because they’ve spread pretty far and wide in central Europe, and I’d assume multiple researchers saying it’s got something to do with climate are probably correct, but I have no clue what the exact reason is since I haven’t actually read anything more rigorous than some pretty generic news articles, so who knows if they were even quoted correctly.

Maybe they’re more likely to spread to warmer areas, because who’d want to ditch continental Europe and slog through Russia to live in this frozen hellhole? Or maybe they’re fans of the Berlin punk scene?

Edit: ok I couldn’t help myself, I had to find an actual scientific article about this. I found one from the Finnish Environment Institute (unsurprisingly in Finnish, here) and here’s a quick’n’dirty translation of what it had to say:

Based on these predictions, alien species whose distribution and success are significantly limited by wintering conditions (occurrence of cold periods during the winter season) are likely to be able to establish in Finland and expand their range more slowly than alien species whose distribution limits are mainly determined by the amount of heat during the growing season. For mammals, for example, the effects of winter conditions are often mediated by two main factors: the amount and duration of snow cover (e.g. raccoon dog, raccoon, Japanese fur seal, spotted grouse) and the presence of ice cover (e.g. nutria).

So apparently the amount and duration of snow cover are what limits the expansion of the trash panda empire, ie. it’s not that it’s incredibly cold here but that winters are longer (because axial tilt) and therefore there’s snow on the ground longer.