Can anyone explain this answer? #help

help I said C initially but during BR switched to E. I thought C was wrong because barren conditions doesn't exactly say much about weather conditions and E could explain the discrepancy because if beetles are older they're likely to appear sooner in the record than pollen....

Want to make sure I'm thinking through this correctly. C is right because it suggests the incorrectness of a premise, that the reason that Peter's actions are more blameworthy than Alicia's. The relevant part of C is just that Peter's running a red light, an illegal action, caused the action that caught the police's attention. I'm struggling to figure out whether the part of C that says that Alicia took extra care to avoid police noticing her contradicts the premise that there's a diff in the blameworthiness. I would argue that it doesn't, but I want to ensure that I've nailed down the important part of the correct answer choice.

Admin Note: Edited title. Please use the format: "PT#.S#.Q# - brief description of the question."