Regarding the May 20 editorial on polar bears: The polar bear population dropped to 5,000 from 10,000 animals in the 1960s due to overhunting. A 1973 hunting restriction treaty raised their numbers up to 20,000 to 25,000 today.

Dr. Mitch Taylor, a Canadian polar bear expert who tracks polar bear populations, says bear populations will show increases, not decreases, in the 2009 census now underway.

Changing ''global warming'' to ''global burning'' is major chutzpah after 10 years of global temperature stagnation ending with a 2007 global temperature drop of 1.25 degrees Fahrenheit. Dr. Noel Keenlyside, in the recent science journal ''Nature,'' published peer-reviewed research showing this global cooling will continue for 10 to 15 more years.

Radical environmentalists seek to impoverish the whole world with United Nations, communist-style ''central planning.'' They will fail using unreliable computer models like these.