#NOAAgate: individuals are usually decent and honest, it's organisations that are not.

A common theme in the replies from #CliamteExtremists is that “if you are suggesting NOAA was doing something wrong you are a conspiracy theorist because why would the people do that?”
This however, always comes from people who have no qualification (and whilst they are mostly anonymous) I doubt they actually have any experience of big organisation and how a lot of well intentioned people can work together to do evil.

Alder Hey organs scandal

The Classic example occurred at Alder Hey. For the Doctors involved, they weren’t doing anything wrong. Young children were dying, their organs could save lives (or to be cynical perhaps be sold to help meet the Doctors salaries). But either way, the public were benefiting and because the parents didn’t know what organs had been stuffed back in the corpse after autopsy, they were none the wiser.
But when it finally emerged this was happening it caused a massive outrage. Because whilst the Doctors didn’t see anything wrong in what they were doing, the parents affected did. And the cause (like NOAA) was a group of people who arrogantly believed that they were right and no one else had a right to tell them what to do.

LIBOR

Less personal in its effect, but equally appalling in its shear magnitude was the LIBOR rate fixing scandal. Here bankers were manipulating the LIBOR interest bank rate to make money. Like NOAA and NASA, they saw nothing wrong with it. Most of the victims were never aware that they had been scammed. It was just a small change to the range that syphoned money into the pockets of those doing it – and almost no one was aware there was any harm. But like NOAA and NASA, the “little tweets” here and there created a culture of manipulation. A culture of dishonest, a culture of arrogance, and that like Aleder Hey the bankers became arrogant because “they were untouchable”.

PPI Scandal

Likewise, the PPI scandal. In this scandal people were being sold personal payment protection which everyone in the industry knew was of no use to most of those being sold it. But the law is “buyer beware”, so from a legal point of view, it could be argued that they were not committed any crime – just preying on the stupidity of the public. But isn’t that just what NOAA and NASA have been doing? But people have trusted them, in a way that no one would ever trust a bank, because they are deemed “official”. What that actually means is “subject to oversight and scrutiny by elected representatives”.
And this is why NOAAgate is such a huge scandal. Because whilst trying to pretend they are “scientists” PLUS they should have all the trust of a fully scrutinised body in the  “public service”, these organisations deny the science of the global warming pause and deny the lawful scrutiny which is all that gives them their reputation.

MPs expenses

In the UK, MPs find that if they ever award themselves a pay rise, the public (or more accurately the press), are up in arms. So, in the UK, the MPs decided to pay themselves increasingly by more and more expenses. The MPs didn’t see a problem. They had an important job and clearly deserved more. And the public didn’t know (or couldn’t do anything about it). Now, MPs are on the whole well intentioned people (or at least as well intentioned as any people from NOAA to Alder Hey doctors), most of whom could (or at least think they could) have a better job with less hassle but who chose to be involved in politics. So, it was understandable they felt they should get more money, and it was just mud raking by the press that was stopping them. And so who was being harmed if they turned a blind eye to larger and larger expenses?
Of course, some MPs were not so altruistic, and some raked the system for all they could get. But worse, it created a culture of dishonesty amongst politicians and again – it all developed because of a lack of oversight: no political party wanted to bring down the system as they all had “their snouts in the trough” (like climate academics).

People are honest – it’s organisations which are not

Where climateExtremists fall down, is that they assume because they might know or have heard of some individual working at NOAA or NASA and can’t possibly imagine them intentionally trying to destroy the world economy and cause millions to die in starvation and poverty, they then falsely assume that this means the whole organisation must be as honest and upright as the people they know (have heard about).
But that is bullshit. I’ve no doubt that if one met a member of the SS killing Jews in WWII in their home, they would have been very friendly, very nice, very law abiding. Indeed it would be very difficult to imagine them as being part of one of the hideous crimes in world history.
What made Nazism bad, was not the individual morality of Germans, but instead a collective morality of German society that tolerated and then condoned evil.
And the same is true of NASA, NOAA, Alder Hey. The doctors were just ordinary doctors, the bankers were trusted bankers. Like many Nazis, many bankers, doctors, etc. went to church, helped out with the local community.
The vast majority of people are honest, decent and law abiding. The problem is that within organisations, the ones who get on and so create the system are the manipulators, those who bend the rules, those who control others, change their goals and morals to better promote the organisation.
So, the effect is that whilst I would almost certainly trust any of the individuals at NOAA, like I would trust (most) MPs,  – because like most decent people they are trustworthy, I wouldn’t trust NOAA itself, unless or until, like every other arrogant lying law-breaking organisation.