Humans may have unwittingly saved themselves from a looming ice age by indiscriminately burning fossil fuels and interfering with the earth's climate, says a new study.

The findings by a team of US climate experts suggest that were it not for greenhouse gases produced by humans, the world might well have been on its way to a frozen Armageddon, reported the daily Scotsman.

The last ice age ended 10,000 years ago and scientists have traditionally viewed the relative stability of the earth's climate since then as being due to natural causes.

But new evidence suggests that changes in solar radiation should have driven the earth towards glacial conditions during the last few thousand years. What stopped it has been human activity, both ancient and modern, scientists argue.

According to them, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere over the last 8,000 years have gradually risen, when previous trends indicated it should have actually dropped.

Methane, another greenhouse gas, too has increased instead of falling.

These unexpected trends, scientists said, were due to massive early deforestation in Eurasia, rice farming in Asia, introduction of livestock and burning of wood and plant material, all of which led to an outpouring of greenhouse emissions.

The research, led by William Ruddiman from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, used a climate model to test what would happen if these greenhouse gases were reduced to their "natural" level.

According to the findings published by them in the Quaternary Science Reviews journal, Ruddiman said, without the human contribution to global warming, Baffin Island would today be in a condition of "incipient glaciation".

Benny Peiser, from Liverpool's John Moores University, said: "Instead of driving us to the brink of disaster, human intervention will be seen as vital activities that have unintentionally delayed the onset of a catastrophic ice age."