2007-05-03 04:09:18 · 7 answers · asked by VK 1 in Environment
An ice age is the period of time when there's ice on the planet. There's ice now and it's been around for a little over 50 million years.
Strange as it may seem we're in an ice age now and over the last 50 million years the temperature trend has been one of cooling, see this graph - http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:65_Myr_Climate_Change_Rev_png
What we're currently experiencing is a warming trend but within a much larger cooling cycle. These natural ice age cycles span about 100 million years, see this graph - http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Phanerozoic_Climate_Change_Rev_png
So to answer your question - we have anything up to 20 million more years of cooling followed by anywhere between 30 and 70 million years of warming before we start to enter another ice age.
However, we've thrown a spanner in the works and the world is now heating up at a rate that's never before been experienced. Temperature changes that should naturally take thousands of years are occuring within a matter of decades. We can only predict where this will take us and if nothing is done to combat global warming it's quite possible that the world will be free of ice in a matter of thousands of years and not millions of years. How soon after that another ice age will begin is very much down to what the people of the future do.
2007-05-03 04:47:57 · answer #1 · answered by Trevor 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Predicted changes in orbital forcing suggest that the next ice age will begin about 50,000 years from now, regardless of man-made global warming.
2007-05-03 18:39:21 · answer #2 · answered by Professor Armitage 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
For 2/3 of the last 60 years we've been in a cooling trend.. obviously we're going into another ice age now.
Hey.. that type of "science" works for the global warming types so we might as well apply it everywhere.
2007-05-03 04:28:36 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 1⤋
Depends on what we do about global warming. If we fix man's (large) contribution to that, we could see an ice age 10,000-100,000 years from now. If not, it will be a very very long time. Maybe never.
2007-05-03 05:08:09 · answer #4 · answered by Bob 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Our Christal ball is not that big. We already have too many giving their opinion on many things even if they know nothing.
2007-05-03 05:26:00 · answer #5 · answered by JOHNNIE B 7 · 1⤊ 1⤋
It will never come again (the earth temperature is getting bigger and bigger we are in front of MELTING AGE)
2007-05-03 04:30:21 · answer #6 · answered by Sarita 5 · 0⤊ 1⤋
25,000 to 50,000 years
2007-05-03 04:14:08 · answer #7 · answered by Ray2play 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋