“until a few years ago, there was no such thing as a climatologist”
Climatologists have been respected scientists for many decades.
Climate modelers, and climate scientists are fairly new, just about 1990.
I am a retired meteorologist. Many states had a state climatologist for decades before anthropogenic “global warming” was a theory.
I stand corrected. I just remember the rant by one of the early guys in the weather channel history who was saying that as a separate degree it didn’t exist until there was a market for it from all this hype.