Ahem, we have something like 27 million years to go in our current ice age. Ice ages occur at 155-million-year intervals and last for about 30 million years, though the first two were of “snowball earth” proportions and lasted much longer. read more
The discrepancies between the evidence from the mud core and the ice cores might be due to disturbances in how material flowed within the ice. "Sometimes there's melting, and you have percolation of material between layers, which can blur the records," Patterson explained. read more