&gt; &quot;We are currently overdue for an ice age&quot;<p>That&#x27;s a very convenient interpretation of the data. We are within the rounding error on a scale of several thousands of years.<p>If the ice age was coming RIGHT NOW, and our carbon emissions were offsetting it, and the situation could be a LOT WORSE, then MAYBE you&#x27;d have a point.  (Though even in this highly unlikely scenario, you&#x27;d think we&#x27;d be able to come up with a better strategy to offset global cooling than acidifying our ocean, melting our glaciers, and inadvertently creating more extreme weather events).<p>But if that&#x27;s NOT Happening, if that scheduled ice age is actually &quot;due&quot; 500 years from now, at the rate at which we are going right now, we can do a LOT of damage to our habitat, and the other living creatures on the planet before it shows up. Before the cooling comes to offset our warming we&#x27;d have created hundreds of millions of refugees from low lying watersheds, caused hundreds of species extinctions, and decreased the quality of life for every single person on the planet - not just the poor fuckers who couldn&#x27;t afford new sea-walls.<p>Is that worth it to you? Or are you happy tasting sand with your head buried below the ground?  If you are, that&#x27;s great because you&#x27;ll be dealing with a lot more sand in your life before it&#x27;s all said and done.