Almost all scientists agree that climate change is being caused by humanity's affect on our world — but the general public isn't quite so convinced. Skeptics often say that even before humans were the reigning species on Earth, the average temperatures on the planet tended to fluctuate between warmer and colder periods. But a pair of new studies basically takes the wind out of that argument, finding solid proof that the climate change we're experiencing now is a direct result of human activity.

The studies, published on Wednesday in Nature and Nature Geoscience, both investigated our current climate and compared it to previous warm periods in the Earth's history. The first study concluded that while certain regions of the Earth have experienced fluctuations in climate before, modern climate change is the first time that the entire planet has warmed — at least in the last 2,000 years.

The second study, meanwhile, assessed the intensity of modern climate change. It found that, even during warm periods in the last 2,000 years, never before has the temperature risen so swiftly as it is now. Since the beginning of the 20th century, global temperatures have risen about two degrees, NBC News explained — and it could rise over five more degrees by the end of this century. That might not seem like a lot, but it's much faster than any other warming event in the last 2,000 years.

The conclusion? "We cannot discern any event that is remotely equivalent" to modern climate change, said Scott St. George, a geographer at the University of Minnesota, in a letter published alongside the two studies.

If there's any hope of reversing the effects of climate change, "it's time for everybody to wake up and make changes now," said Jennifer Hertzberg, a paleoclimatologist not involved in the research. Read more at NBC News. Shivani Ishwar

The Harvey Weinstein jury is headed into the second day of deliberations after wrapping up Tuesday with no verdict reached.

Jury deliberations began Tuesday in the trial of the disgraced movie mogul, who is facing sexual assault and rape charges and has pleaded not guilty. At the center of the case is Mimi Haleyi's allegation that Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her in 2006 and Jessica Mann's allegation that Weinstein raped her in 2013. Four other accusers testified in the trial, including Annabella Sciorra, whose testimony is being used to support the charge of predatory sexual assault.

On Tuesday, the jury asked why it is that there are no "stand-alone" charges in Sciorra's case, which is too old to prosecute, Deadline reports. This question, Deadline observes, could indicate that jurors have "some confusion about Sciorra's role in the trial." The judge instructed the jury not to speculate on any charges other than the ones before them.

The jury also asked for the legal definition of the charges and clarification about the circumstances under which they can find him guilty of certain counts but not others, ABC News reports. The jurors have an "intricate task" ahead of them, The Wrap notes, as they are not to find him guilty on all five counts. For example, as The Wrap reports, "If the jury finds Weinstein guilty of count three, predatory sexual assault (pertaining to Mann and Sciorra), then the jurors must disregard counts four and five, which are the two rape charges connected to Mann's account."

Additionally, the jury on Tuesday asked to review a blueprint of the apartment where Haleyi alleges Weinstein assaulted her, as well as emails where Weinstein listed out to a private investigator the names of women he thought could be cooperating with Ronan Farrow, Deadline reports.

Jury deliberations are set to resume on Wednesday morning. Brendan Morrow

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg turned 78 years old last Friday. That makes him the same age as his top rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and six months older than former Vice President Joe Biden.

Everybody is expected to pile on Bloomberg in Wednesday night's Democratic debate in Nevada, and Sanders tested out his salvos in a CNN town hall on Tuesday night. But age isn't the only thing Bloomberg and Sanders have in common. Neither has been a Democrat for most of the past two decades, for example, and both have had two coronary arterial stents inserted near their hearts to relieve blockages.

Sanders, who had a heart attack in October, said Tuesday night that he won't release his full medical records. After getting out of the hospital, he had said "the people do have a right to know about the health of a senator, somebody who's running for president of the United States — full disclosure." On Tuesday night, Sanders said the three letters he released from doctors equal "a detailed medical report," and when pressed on whether he plans to release his medical records, he said, "I don't think we will, no."

Bloomberg disclosed his 2000 heart operation for the first time in 2007. In December, he released a letter from his longtime physician, Dr. Stephen Sisson at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, attesting that Bloomberg is "in outstanding health," though he developed an irregular heartbeat called an "atrial fibrillation" last year and is treating it with blood thinners. Bloomberg "has had normal cardiac stress testing annually" since he had the stents inserted in 2000, Sisson wrote, and the artery has not become clogged again.

"Heart problems are extremely common in older adults," The Associated Press notes. At the same time, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Tuesday found that 53 percent of voters have "some reservations" or are "very uncomfortable" with a candidate who had a recent heart attack. Peter Weber

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Tuesday had pretty decent numbers for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.): She was in a virtual tie for second place in the Democratic primary race with former Vice President Joe Biden and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg — all of them at least 12 percentage points behind Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), steady at 27 percent — and Warren was just behind Sanders in which candidate Democratic voters are most "enthusiastic" about or "comfortable" with.

But how did Warren fare in a head-to-head matchup against President Trump, the question that most captivates Democrats? The poll didn't ask.

The pollsters — Peter Hart (D) and Bill McInturff (R) — asked how Sanders, Biden, Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) would fare against Trump, but not Warren, who polled 1 point higher than Buttigieg and 7 points ahead of Klobuchar. Hart told BuzzFeed News the pollsters only had "space and time" to poll five head-to-head matchups, and "Klobuchar was selected as the fifth candidate" because of her jump to third place in New Hampshire's primary and a lack of data on who her voters are.

The poll tested Warren against Trump "fairly recently," Hart added, and "I suspect she will be part of the next testing." Still, "to Warren backers, the poll was a flashpoint, the culmination of weeks of frustrations" that the media appears to have "erased her candidacy in the wake of her showings in Iowa and New Hampshire," BuzzFeed reports.

In the head-to-head matchups, all five Democrats beat Trump, though the strongest candidate is Biden, who holds a commanding 8-point lead in both the national race and in 11 battleground states. For the other four candidates, the battleground states are a tossup. And despite Sanders' clear lead among Democrats, he also checks off the qualities all voters say they are most uncomfortable with: socialist, recent heart attack, and over 75.

The NBC News/WSJ poll was conducted Feb. 14-17 among 900 registers voters. The overall margin of error is ±3.3 percentage points, and for the 426 Democratic primary voters, ±4.8 points. Peter Weber

The Utah Senate voted unanimously on Tuesday to downshift polygamy among consenting adults from a third-degree felony to an infraction punishable with a fine of up to $750 and community service, similar to a parking ticket. Stiff penalties would remain for fraudulent bigamy, where a spouse obtains marriage licenses for more than one spouse unaware of the polygamy, and marrying an underage bride without her consent.

The goal, according to lead sponsor state Sen. Deirdre Henderson (R), is to allow women and children in polygamous families to report abuse and other crimes and obtain government services without fear of being arrested. A federal court struck down Utah's strict anti-polygamy law when Sister Wives star Kody Brown sued, but an appellate court overturned the decision and the Supreme Court decided not to hear an appeal. It's not clear the bill will pass in the Utah House.

If easing polygamy laws sounds like conservative Utah embracing behind-closed-doors libertarianism, the state House also voted Tuesday to require printed and online pornography to carry labels warning that the obscene material is harmful to children. "The new measure is narrowly aimed at hardcore obscene material, but the way the law is written could still allow for thousands of lawsuits," The Associated Press reports, citing Mike Stabile of the pornography trade group the Free Speech Coalition. Each violation would incur a fine of up to $2,500.

Both laws are rooted in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Mormon church, which counts a majority of Utahans as members. Utah declared porn a public health crisis in 2016, and polygamy was brought to Utah by Mormon settlers in 1847. "The church disavowed polygamy in 1890 as a condition of Utah statehood, and today members of the faith found to be practicing plural marriage are excommunicated," Reuters reports. At the same time, some 30,000 "fundamentalist" Mormons practice polygamy on the fringes. Peter Weber

The Bernie Sanders campaign and the Vermont senator's supporters are fed up with MSNBC, after what they perceive as months of "slights from MSNBC's stable of hosts and commentators," Tom Kludt writes at Vanity Fair. Sanders and his campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, requested a meeting with MSNBC president Phil Griffin last fall to see if the liberal cable news network would "change the tone and the tenor of the coverage that we receive," Shakir told Vanity Fair. "They've been among the last to acknowledge that Bernie Sanders' path to the nomination is real, and even when it's become real, they frequently discount it."

Things haven't improved since then, as far as Team Sanders is concerned, and "the constant diminishment of Bernie Sanders on MSNBC" is "actively damaging" the Sanders campaign and "hurts his case for electability," Shakir told Vanity Fair. CNN is at least making "efforts to try and diversify their voices" with pro-Sanders hires, he added, and even Fox News has been "more fair than MSNBC" to Sanders. "That's saying something," Shakir added. "Fox is often yelling about Bernie Sanders' socialism, but they're still giving our campaign the opportunity to make our case in a fair manner, unlike MSNBC, which has credibility with the left and is constantly undermining the Bernie Sanders campaign."

The Atlantic's Christopher Orr agreed with Shakir that it's "saying something," but maybe not in the way Shakir intended. "'Network that desperately wants Trump re-elected gives favorable coverage to Sanders,' says Sanders campaign manager, without a whiff of irony," he tweeted, paraphrasing Shakir's comments, probably a little unfairly. MSNBC, for its part, has previously shrugged off the criticism from Team Sanders as attempts to work the ref. "A presidential campaign complaining about tough questions and commentary speaks for itself," an MSNBC spokesperson told The Daily Beast last July. You can read more about the Sanders-MSNBC tensions at Vanity Fair. Peter Weber

Former President Barack Obama celebrated Presidents' Day — or "President's Day," as President Trump tweeted Monday — by subtweeting his successor on the economy.

Trump has been touting the economy in his pitch for re-election, often employing exaggeration, and he got Obama's message.

That could have been the end of it, but Trump is not known for letting things go. So on Tuesday, Trump's trade adviser Peter Navarro, a key proponent of Trump's trade war with China, went on CNN to explain how Trump's economy is much stronger than Obama's. CNN's Poppy Harlow noted that Obama topped 4 percent GDP growth four times while Trump is yet to hit 3 percent, and he created more jobs on average during his second term than Trump has during his first.

Navarro was undeterred. "Back in the Obama-Biden years, it was horrible," he said, listing some talking points until Harlow finally broke in, noting the data doesn't support his argument. "You can look at your numbers, but I lived that," Navarro replied. "The numbers are the numbers, Peter," Harlow said. "This is all politics," Navarro concluded.

Axios took its own look at the numbers and ranked Trump's economy No. 6 out of the last 10 presidential administrations, based on average GDP growth, "the most comprehensive economic scorecard — and something presidents, especially Trump, use as an example of success." Presidents have limited control over the economy, but the average GDP growth under Trump is higher than under Obama, and "some aspects of the Trump economy, like wage growth and business investment, pale in comparison to other periods," Axios notes.

"Unlike other presidents, Trump inherited a steady economy that's since entered the longest stretch of growth in history," Axios says. "Interest rates remain low. Growth picked up in the wake of the 2017 tax cuts, but now the pace has moderated," hitting 2.3 percent in 2019. The juice from Trump's $1.5 trillion tax cut is wearing off and "businesses were too unnerved by the trade war to spend money on new factories or equipment — a key driver of growth," Axios reports. If consumer spending drops, watch Obama's twitter feed. Peter Weber