Conclusive Proof: Warming Causes Liberals To Say Stupid Things

Speaking of climate change, concert violinist and University of British Columbia music prof Eugenia Choi adds to the list of the consequences of global warming--crappy music:

[C]loser to home, you don’t have to look far for concrete examples of climate change, she says. Take her 300-year old, handcrafted Stradivarius violin. It’s not that they don’t make them like they used to, it’s that they can’t.

"For musicians, our instruments connect us to a natural world very much threatened by climate change," Choi says. "People wonder why a fine violin can cost more than a house. Largely, it’s because global warming has changed how trees grow. You can no longer create new violins of the same quality. There just aren’t the same types of wood or density."

"I feel a moral duty to protect these wonderful instruments so I use them to teach students about our relationship with environment," says Choi, who received her doctorate in music from the Juilliard School in 2007. "As someone who cares passionately about music and nature, it is a great concern to me."

Jon Ferry "Fisked" Choi in a column for The Province:

Earlier this year, Texas researchers had a different theory, namely that the violins from the golden age of Italian instrument-making in the late 17th and early 18th centuries owed their celestial sound to chemicals in the wood preservatives. And other theories over the years have focused on everything from the fiddles' glues and varnish to their unique shape. But as a Wikipedia entry on the subject concludes: "There remains no consensus on the single most probable factor."

My point here is that the scientific debate over the violins made in Cremona, Italy, during a 70-year period of global cooling is far from over. It's as unsettled as that over climate change today.

Our universities should be keeping an open and inquiring mind about both -- at least if they're interested in higher learning, as they claim to be.

Instead, they simply seem intent on cheerleading for the green team, pushing eco-propaganda. And that shortchanges us all.

When objective facts are discarded, is there anything global warming can't do?

By the way, the Washington Post noted last week that Snowy Owls returned to D.C. this winter--without even mentioning the reason: "Notice how the idea that it's bloody cold this year! isn't considered as an explanation for why Arctic owls rarely seen in these parts are hanging out on L Street."

(via Anthony Watts)