David Little is the editor of the Chico ER. He writes a Sunday column which, at times, can be quite readable. Mr. Little is very much a Conservative. But he also is an outdoorsman and a hunter. He wrote a great column welcoming California's first wolf (OR-7) to California. That's a fairly progressive view for a hunter to have: usually they hate the competition from predators.
David has written some great columns on enjoying little known Wilderness areas (Gold Lake). He also has written awesome columns about backpacking the Coastal Range.
I've corresponded with David, although not so much lately. We've argued over Lead Ammunition and about whether the reduction of the deer population is 1. a bad thing and 2. a result of having more Mountain Lion. David Little has never broached the coyote killing issue. Perhaps I should write and ask him his opinion on that.
David Little was critical of both Sam Aanestad and Doug LaMalfa---and refused to endorse either one in the primary of 2012. In the general election, he endorsed Doug LaMalfa, not so much because Doug is so wonderful, but rather because Little really disliked his challenger.
And so, as far as local Conservative Columnists go, I'd give David credit for being a bit more interesting than most.
But there are times when David Little is just simply stupid. He did that this weekend when he wrote about Climate Change. You can read his piece here. Of course, David Little goes back to that really tired argument that science has been wrong before as when some scientist suggested, for a very short time in 1976, that the world was starting to cool. This hypothesis was quickly debunked---but Conservatives have never forgotten it. They use this as a lens to bolster an argument that global warming is all hyperbole. Never mind that this hypothesis has been studied for forty years. Never mind that it has wide-spread acceptance amongst professionals. That doesn't bother Mr. Little.
Two things are interesting about this piece. One is the comments at end of the piece. Every Right Wing Nerd who thinks he (and it is almost always a he) has done all the research and who quotes Roy Spencer and the Heartland Institute ad nauseum, genuflecting to the denialist Kremlin Wall of the rare science denialists; these guys troll the Internet, looking for articles to bolster their cause and to demean their critics. In this case me: just look in the comments section. Of 68 comments, only a handful are critical of David Little's article.
The other interesting thing is just how much climate denialism has joined the mainstream views of the Conservative Movement. It used to be Conservatives accepted the science. No more. Now they all bow at the idol of the Fossil Fuel Companies. Of all the Conservatives, probably the most honest is the former Governor of Utah, Jon Huntsman, who said that yes, Climate Change is a problem---we just can't afford to fix it. At least that is a straight-forward honest answer.
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