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Raw Story has printed a letter sent to Congress from thousands of US scientists and experts.

In it, our scientific community expresses unconditional recognition of the real dangers of global warming, the impact it’s already had on our planet, and the urgent need for government action to reduce our fossil fuel consumption. Though the EPA has left our planet for dead, at least a huge number of American scientists are trying to do something about it.

My one complaint about the letter is that it occasionally uses the term “climate change,” which is a Republican frame that attempts to make global warming seem more like a pleasant seasonal alteration and less like a potential devastator of modern society.

But that’s a minor issue, and probably one that feeds into their plan. As we all know, whenever the right wants to distract us from their failings, they manufacture absurd definitional arguments. In Iraq, we’re debating over whether the violence constitutes “civil war.” By refusing to acknowledge that it does, Republicans have moved the debate away from the war and the bloodshed (plus the fact that it’s all their fault) and into the realm of semantics. The same thing is true for reproductive freedom. We spend loads of time arguing over whether a zygote is a person or not, but it really doesn’t matter.

Whatever they choose to call it, any time a conservative pulls the “we can’t be sure” card when it comes to global warming, or whenever one chooses to play semantic games about the environment and what warming “really means for the planet,” we should simply refer them to something like this letter. The unanimity from environmental experts is further proof that the debate is over.

The European Union is about to have a new battery recycling law:

It says a quarter of all used batteries must be collected by 2012 – rising to 45% by 2016 – and that at least half of them must be recycled.

This is just peachy, because batteries are just full of all kinds of unpleasant crap, like acids and heavy metals. And this kind of program would be difficult to implement in America, where industry could argue that it’s just too damn expensive-handing all that unpleasant crap is not cheap. With this in mind, I bring you the very first edition of Yay! Science!

Solid state flexible batteries.

Brand-spanking new batteries that will usher in an Orwellian age of smartcards and RFID tags – problems that can be handled with laws if we ever manage to shake off this theocratic monarchy and get ourselves some sort of democracy. In the meantime, the new batteries are more enviornmentally friendly, produce equivalent or more power from a smaller-than-conventional battery (getting rid of the acid-and the stuff necessary to contain the acid- is really helpful), and good for thousands of recharges. Initially they will be used in medical applications and RFID tags, you know, small stuff. In the future, however, they could get big enough and powerful enough to drive our electric cars, which by then better damn well be flying electric cars that drive themselves, because I’m going to need cooler stuff as this Yay! Science! bit develops. Hint hint, MIT.