However, don't rush for your woolly hat and scarf just yet, because the long-term effects of human-made climate change could prevent the next ice age from ever happening. Our planet has always ...

During an ice age, the polar regions are cold, there are large differences in temperature from the equator to the pole, and large, continental-size glaciers can cover enormous regions of the earth.

During the last ice age, massive continental ice sheets up to five km high covered much of North America and northern Europe (the Laurentide and Fennoscandian ice sheets, respectively).