Neven's Arctic Sea Ice Blog, in my opinion, the best source on the net for sea ice interpretation and news, has just recently published a feature you might be interested in: "Arctic Sea Ice in Pre-election Perception", which examines the public response to this issue.

http://neven1.typepad.com/

Denying science is definitely lucrative business. I learned it the hard way, I used to work for the Atomic Energy Commission/Nuclear Power Industry's propaganda branch. I must admit, compared to some of the examples you bring up, these guys were relatively ethical, positively benign in comparison. Still, I had a pitch on high-level nuclear power plant waste that would make you want to go out and buy stock in it, in fact, invest your life savings in it. It was all true, too. No technical expert could point to anything incorrect in it (we were cautioned not to lie, make things up, or otherwise give our opponents any ammunition that could be used against us). But it was a masterpiece of cherry-picked data, slanted interpretations, convenient half-truths and left out, or stopped short, or skipped over all the negative interpretations. It was a masterpiece of deceit, without once telling an outright untruth. I know how these creeps work, I almost became one.

This sort of thing didn't start with cigarettes and lung cancer. Are you old enough to recall the smear job the pesticide industry did on Rachel Carson after she published "Silent Spring"? And I recognize the same hand at work today in the firearms debate.

There is a certain mentality in our private sector that feels that anyone who has the audacity to question their motives or practices (or profits)is an enemy of freedom and civilization and that anything done to discredit or even destroy their critics is not only justifiable, but a patriotic act.

And as you point out, this is just not the expected response of an industry to protect its profits. An institutional infrastructure of lawyers, lobbyists public relations types and other shills has arisen with the expertise and skills to employ these tactics on behalf of any industry engaged in selling death and poison.

And now, they have allied themselves with a political ideology.