Climate change sceptics criticise polar bear science

As the poster child for the climate change generation polar bears have come to symbolise the need to tackle climate change. But their popularity has attracted the attention of global warming sceptics funded by the oil industry, who have started to attack polar bear science.
Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and his colleagues question whether polar bear populations really are declining and if sea ice, on which the animals hunt, will actually disappear as quickly as climate models predict (Ecological Complexity, DOI: 10.1016/j.ecocom.2007.03.002). Soon, who receives funding for this and other work from Exxon-Mobil, has been attacking climate change science for several years. Three of the six other authors also have links to the oil industry.
A reply to Soon's paper, under review at the journal, accuses him of ignoring data that does not fit his argument and of misinterpreting the predictions made by climate models. The paper is also likely to be discussed this week when the five nations with the major polar bear populations - Russia, Norway, Greenland, the US and Canada - meet in Washington DC. US government officials describe the event as one of a series on polar bear management. Delegates from other nations, who asked not to named, say they fear the US may seek to water down existing commitments to restrict polar bear hunting and trade in products such as their skins.