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The senate is voting right now on the government funding extension that was passed in the house. if this vote to end the bill passes with at least 60 senators, majority leader harry reid is then expected to strip the provision that defunds obama care before a final vote on passage. at that point he would need just 51 votes to pass the government funding extension, which would include funding for obama care, if that's not complicated enough. all right. unequivocal, that's the word the world's top climate scientists use today to describe the warming of the planet, on the ground, in the air, and ...

Defenders dying in the name of stopping these things and much more okay with that as a society than letting the fire sort of do what they will and burn down houses and houses of the wealthy and get close or threaten civilization. >> it's a set of tradeoffs. we have these opportunities to protect life and property. we have people building in and around flammable vegetation. we have other areas, the hetch hetchy reservoir that services not just the people living in and around that national park, but obviously the large city of san francisco. when we think about whether to move in with informatio...

Atmospheric scientist at the institute of marine and coastal sciences at rutgers university. she joins us via skype. doctor, can we point to anything that's causing the extreme weather here? >> well, yes, as a matter of fact, we can point to a number of things that are related to the changing climate system. for one thing, the atmosphere is warmer. a warmer atmosphere has more energy in it. any storm that forms has more energy to work with. we're also seeing that there's more moisture in the atmosphere. that moisture not only provides initial precipitation for storms but it also, when it conde...

Political system did is lower interest rates and allow poor people to think they were richer because they could take out home equity loans thanks to fannie and freddie. >> all of these discussions run into this question of whether or not the climate system is going to fall apart on us and there needs to be a radical transformation of how we use energy if that's not going to happen. this is not to say that growth is always good. but in the short term, this is what has to happen. if you look at china, because you can use it as a tool for driving investment. i'm not opposed to public finance at a...

Is is the odds are shifting. think about it like speeding in a car. when you're speeding you increase the odds of an accident. when you put more energy in the climate system you make it warmer overall. you're increasing the risk of the kinds of extreme events we've been seeing. >> when you look outside of the united states, is this also a trend that you have seen? >> the trends in high temperature extremes and length and severity of droughts and in heavy precipitation are observable at the global scale and in many parts of the world. certainly the u.s. is not alone in having experienced a seve...