We are in the Holocene. It is an interglacial period. Another glacial period could occur, triggered by "natural" factors or human induced factors, or a combination of both.

It would be strange, if already known cycle of glacials and interglacials would stop. So - I am almost sure that another glacial will appear. I have no idea when it will be, but it probably will be. As I have heard, such changes can appear rapidly, even in decades. Just hope it won't happen during my life...

I remember in the 1970s there were magazine articles predicting "the coming ice age." This fear was eventually replaced by fears about global warming. I would not be surprised if global warming eventually triggers changes that will promote climate cooling in the future.

Thank you very much for your inputs Ms. Wilczek and Mr. DiBlasi! I am honored to hear your thoughts regarding this question! It is only until now I had encountered the idea that the Earth's timeline has a glacial cycle. If I may ask further, what exactly promoted climate cooling that eventually leads to a glacial period (in reference to previous ice age)? Is the earth's axial tilt somehow involved? As far as I know the tilt is responsible for the uneven heating of the surface that results to different climates in different regions of the earth, but I am not sure to what extent it is involved in glacial periods.

Taking into account natural causes such as stochastic events like the El Nino and La Nina, coupled with the strong impact of human disturbance on the environment as well as its organisms, it is not unlikely that another Ice Age might occur, but not too soon, slowly progressing and possibly kicking off 50 thousand years from now.

There was a study done by Weaver and Hillaire-Marcel on this issue; according to them, the North Atlantic ocean circulation is highly unlikely to be significantly affected by global warming. They also added that glacier formation and growth are highly unlikely due to higher surface and atmosphere temperature brought about by increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Sometimes people think that IPCC does investigate into global warming, but indeed it looks into climate change. The expression global warming is out since many years as it is acknowldeged that it is much more than around temperature change. Global cooling, if it exists is also climate change.

Whether there will be global warming or cooling as the outcome depends on the overall effect of maqny differnt factors / variables. There is one global climate, in which innumerous processes happen that have warming and cooling impacts. They can have only one outcome in a given location, meaning that a specific location can have only one climate outcome. Different locations compared, however, have different outcomes, in some warming and in others cooling. So indeed it is not correct to perceive warming and cooling two different processes, both are the result of the same, very complex changing of the climate.

In Germany we can have temperatures in winter of minus 20 degrees Celsius. That is winter and we call this winter weather. Some years winters are mild, other years very harsh, long and very cold. Weather and climate are different things, and the weather is never the same. It changes and also if the sun energy received on January 1 at a particular place would be the same every year (which is not the case as the sender (sun) sends not always the same) it still would result in different weather as the energy received is only one from many, many factors that makes the weather. I think that the cooling effect due to reduced sun activity (if it exists) moderates anthropogenic warming impacts, the same other natural impacts on the climate would such as volcanic eruptions etc. We should realise that something as complex as climate has many contributing factors that lead to change. To assume that everything is caused by humans or everything by natural causes is far too simplistic. For that reason it is rather difficult to make any precise predictions of the future. So both (processes that contribute to warming and such contributing to cooling) not only can happen, but they do, and they always did. What now is sold as new ideas and change to previous scientific knowledge is actually nothing really new other than that one aspect from an extremely complex process is taken out and displayed as the whole truth.