Another study surfaces, and how it was received is informative.

"I don't think there is any question polar bears are in danger from global warming," said Andrew Derocher of the World Conservation Union, and a professor of biological sciences at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. "People who deny that have a clear interest in hunting bears."

Bear numbers on the west coast of Hudson's Bay had shrunk by 22 per cent over the past decade, he said.

"They are declining due to global warming and changes in when the ice freezes and melts in Hudson's Bay," he added. He and other scientists in his group are concerned that the retreating ice in the Arctic may pose a danger to future generations of polar bears because of 'habitat loss'. "The critical problem is the sea ice is changing. "We're looking ahead three generations, 30 to 50 years.

"To say that bear populations are growing in one area now is irrelevant."

In every one of the global warming warning stories, it's always the Western Hudson Bay group of bears that is invoked. This is because this population is seriously declining. Other populations are stable, and in some areas, as the article mentions, are actually increasing.

Source

Of nineteen groups, seven have insufficient data, mostly in Russian areas. Of the remaining 12 population groups, 5 are listed as "declining," 5 are listed as "stable," and two are listed as "increasing." Note the numbers of bears that are "removed," i.e. shot. Legally.

Oddly, Derocher doesn't see the irony of his last sentence above. To say that populations are shrinking drastically in one area is equally irrelevant.