Above, my interivew with Chris Mooney at the American Geophysical Fall Meeting in 2011. He lays out the thrust of his book “The Republican Brain”.

For years, Mooney has pursued the question of why Science has become an ideological battlefield in US politics.

Mooney has now been hired to blog on science for the Washington Post, and many observers are taking this as an indication of a newly increased seriousness on contentious areas of science, in particular global climate change.

ClimateProgress:

In August, the Washington Post seemed to finally turn a corner on human-caused climate change, launching a series of editorials demanding a change in both dialogue and action.

On Friday, the Post took a major step toward improving its woefully inadequate climate coverage. Greg Schneider, the paper’s national economy and business editor, and David Cho, deputy business editor, announced:

We’re thrilled to announce that Chris Mooney is joining The Post to create a new blog about the environment…. He will start as part of Wonkblog, and build toward the future rollout of a standalone blog that will pull together the excellent work of The Post’s all-star roster of energy and environment writers.

Mooney is probably best known for his best-selling 2005 book, “The Republican War on Science.” He has, however, written 3 other excellent books, dozens of articles for major publications, and of course countless blog posts over the past decade, including ones for the American Progress site, Science Progress.

Chris was one of my inspirations for becoming a blogger, and I’ve known him for years. You can even catch a interview of me he did for his terrific podcast. He’s a terrific choice for the Washington Post, which points out: