Political Junky likes Hell and High Water.

Giant battery to store wind power planned – Reuters. The British arm of a German utility is developing a giant battery to store intermittent wind power for times of high demand. “This is the holy grail of the wind industry,” said a spokesman. “The electrochemical technology is proven but we’re using a new mix of chemicals to overcome the difficulties that stopped previous attempts.”

Study Predicts Worse Air Pollution Days For Eastern U.S. Cities – AHN (global news agency). “If global warming continues unabated, more polluted air days are predicted for the summer for Cleveland, Columbus,” Washington, DC and several other eastern U.S. cities, according to a study by researchers at Yale, Johns Hopkins, Columbia and other universities. “Air pollution for these cities will worsen because of sudden increase in unsafe air days caused by ground-level ozone.” The study is “Heat Advisory: How Global Warming Causes More Bad Air Days.”

Governors seek action on global warming – USA Today. “We have a federal government that doesn’t seem to want to move as fast or as bold as many would like” on global warming, said Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN). Duh.

Scientists to build global network of underwater laboratories – International Herald Tribune. “Over the next five years, scientists from around the world will design and build a global network of underwater laboratories … that capitalizes on advances in satellite, Internet and sound wave technology…. [T]he Ocean Observatories Initiative will for the first time give scientists a permanent virtual presence in the sea…. [M]uch of the force behind the initiative stems from concern about global warming.

My most-visited post of the year had more than 15,000 readers and 100 comments. Here are some lessons learned:

[OK, regular readers of this blog, I am writing this mostly off-topic post in hopes of winning a blog post writing contest -- but my ulterior motive is to bring in some new readers, who might make an insightful comment that changes your life, so bear with me!]

1. Put “must read” in the headline – it pulled you into this post, didn’t it? More seriously, the point is to be clear and blunt (and if you say, “must read” it better be a must read, else no one will come back). The full post headline was “Must read from Hansen: Stop the madness about the tiny revision in NASA’s temperature data!” Long accurate headlines are more compelling than short cryptic ones. I learned this tip from my Dad, who was a newspaper editor for 30 years.

2. Offer a strong, informed opinion on a topical subject. Obvious, I know, but important to mention nonetheless. The blogosphere was just erupting over NASA’s data revision (see, for instance, these posts by Realclimate and Planet Gore). I was able to weigh in with a position supported by the nation’s top climate scientist.

3. Use a compelling graphic your readers haven’t seen. Hansen had two terrific figures showing how insignificant the data revision really was — especially to global temperatures (see below). But he put them in PDF form so they weren’t very accessible. It took me a while to figure out how, but I cut and paste them into Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo, turned them into JPEGs, and reposted them. A number of other websites, like ThinkProgress, could then easily copy them and write their own posts, usually linking back here.

The figure underscores the main message of the post — in Hansen’s words, “the corrected and uncorrected curves are indistinguishable”:

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