'According to the best available science, this is very unlikely. Here’s why:

Around the globe, a natural ocean “conveyor belt” slowly winds its way through the oceans, helping to regulate our planet’s climate. For example, it brings warm waters from the tropics to the North Atlantic, making places like Iceland and Western Europe warm enough to be comfortable.

As Earth’s average temperature increases due to global warming, melting glaciers and increased rainfall and runoff will inject additional freshwater into the North Atlantic. The saltiness of the conveyor current is critical for maintaining the flow, and an influx of freshwater, which significantly reduces the salinity of the North Atlantic branch of the current, can slow the movement of the conveyor belt. In theory, a major reduction or halting of this flow—especially if it happened suddenly enough—could destabilize the global climate, causing some regions of the globe to become much cooler, even as average global temperatures continue to increase.

According to one school of thought, a warming planet is one that's less likely to wind up in an ice age. Because the Earth is always going through warming and cooling cycles, and we've been in one of the warming cycles for about 12,000 years now, scientists say it's inevitable that we'll hit another big chill sometime in the next 10,000 to 100,000 years. If that happens, much of the world -- including Europe and North America -- would be covered in a thick sheet of ice. According to some researchers, the heat trapped in the Earth's atmosphere from the greenhouse effect will offset this cooling -- essentially preventing the Earth from entering another ice age [sources: Science Daily, Cosmos]. Though averting an ice age sounds like good news, the researchers caution that global warming isn't any picnic, either. It could lead to other drastic and unpleasant effects on the planet (think rising sea levels and dwindling global food supplies).

Over the past couple of decades such warnings have been drowned out by the great global warming debate and by consideration of how society might cope in future with a sweltering planet rather than an icebound one. Seemingly, the fact that we are still within an interglacial period, during which the ice has largely retreated to its polar fastnesses, has been forgotten - and replaced with the commonly-held view that one good thing you can say about global warming is that it will at least stave off the return of the glaciers.

Is this really true, or could the rapidly accelerating warming that we are experiencing actually hasten the onset of a new ice age? A growing body of evidence suggests that, at least for the UK and western Europe, there is a serious risk of this happening - and soon.

According to one school of thought, a warming planet is one that's less likely to wind up in an ice age. Because the Earth is always going through warming and cooling cycles, and we've been in one of the warming cycles for about 12,000 years now, scientists say it's inevitable that we'll hit another big chill sometime in the next 10,000 to 100,000 years. If that happens, much of the world -- including Europe and North America -- would be covered in a thick sheet of ice.