conservative think tanks

A "think tank" is supposed to be a place where qualified people explore problems and issues by identifying what the facts are and allowing those facts to lead to whatever conclusion is most logical.  Conservative think tanks--I'm thinking specifically of the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato Institute--for the most part turn that process on its head.

In those tanks, the usual process is to take a conclusion the right wishes to promulgate and find facts that seem to support it.  Want to deny global warming or celebrate the efficacy of "trickle-down" economics or prove the seditious nature of the labor movement?  Just ask AEI for a position paper and it will assign one of its hired gun Ph.D.'s to produce one that proves whatever you wanted it to prove--or, just as frequently--proves that the position you want to take isn't necessarily wrong.

The climate change issue provides a good example.  If you examine the papers and studies that have come out of the conservative think tanks, what you discover is that they do one of two things.  In some instances,  they cherry pick a random fact or two (e.g., the earth went through several cycles of hotter and colder weather before man even came along) and use them to produce a conclusion.  These studies focus entirely on their cherry picked facts and simply ignore the mountain of contradictory evidence that exists.

In other instances, they nibble around the edges of mainstream science not so much to discredit it as to suggest that legitimate questions can be raised about it.  For instance, even though we know that the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels has a demonstrable shelf life of many years and that carbon dioxide has the effect of trapping heat from the earth's surface and that the global mean temperature has risen over the past 20 years, it's possible (say these think tanks) that the earth is simply entering into one of its periodic warm cycles and the exponential increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not actually affecting anything.  The conclusion these studies reach is that since we can't ABSOLUTELY prove a connection between human activity and global warming, we shouldn't change anything about that activity.  That, of course, is a little like saying when I see a fist heading forcefully toward my face, since I can't know for certain it won't miss me, I shouldn't bother to duck.

All these organizations receive substantial funding from conservative scions like the Koch brothers and Coors family and were founded for the express purpose of providing intellectual (or more frequently, pseudo-intellectual) cover for conservative positions, most of which have insuring that the hegemony of the haves over the have nots continues forever.  They have a right to exist, obviously, but it would be nice if media outlets would stop referring to them as "think tanks" and identify them as what they are--propaganda mills for conservative ideology.