We got a 3000m tall volcano in the middle of Sicily (currently full of snow unless it changed somehow since I last saw it this morning) and the Appennini in Umbria and Marche (800-2400m elevation) whose temperatures are roughly on par with those in most of northern Europe.

People living in those areas are not particularly smarter than those living on the coast, I'm afraid. Correlation is not causation, yadda yadda.