Human emissions 'deferring' next Ice Age?

CAMBRIDGE, England, Jan. 9 (UPI) -- Human emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, will delay the Earth's next Ice age, European, Canadian and U.S. scientists say.

An international team of researchers says data on historical warm interglacial periods most like the current one suggest the Earth would be due for another Ice Age in 1,500 years, but human emissions have been so high it could be pushed farther into the future.

If CO2 concentrations were at "natural" levels the glaciation cycle would hold, they say, but as things stand it will not.

"I don't think it's realistic to think that we'll see the next glaciation on the [natural] timescale," Lawrence Mysak at McGill University in Montreal told BBC News.

There are those who saying putting off the next Ice Age would be a good thing, but Luke Skinner of Cambridge University in England says that's a shortsighted view.

"It's an interesting philosophical discussion -- 'would we better off in a warm [interglacial-type] world rather than a glaciation?' -- and probably we would," he said.

"But it's missing the point, because where we're going is not maintaining our currently warm climate but heating it much further, and adding CO2 to a warm climate is very different from adding it to a cold climate.

"The rate of change with CO2 is basically unprecedented, and there are huge consequences if we can't cope with that," he said.