Washington Post: As the erstwhile icon of climate change, polar bears have been a very political subject. Conservatives love to lambaste Al Gore over his claims about drowning polar bears in his 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth. The Department of the Interior even launched an investigation into a U.S. researcher who had authored a 2006 study describing several polar bear drownings (he later reached a $ 100,000 settlement with the agency).
Meanwhile, politics aside, the habitat in which polar bears live -- the...