Professionalism starts to veer towards behaviour, and I will admit that the scientists are not magnanimous in the face of the pesky bloggers
Deflect. minimize, whatever you need to do to to defend the indefensible. These were not just "pesky" bloggers. These were practicing academics. Moreover, it is insulting and condescending for you to denigrate people trying to get published in the peer reviewed literature just because they are not full time academics.
but it's a giant leap to what you're saying about them.
Similar nonsense has been going for 20 years involving multiple scientists. I picked this example because the evidence should be so obvious that even you could not dismiss it but I was wrong (you are just as bad as Trump defenders who insist he was "exonerated" and did nothing wrong). It is clear to anyone that has been paying attention and is not being willfully blind that many climate scientists lack objectivity and the degree of professionalism that we expect from people tasked with providing input into the legislative process. But I guess there is no evidence short of a confession from the accused that would be sufficient to convince you.
They were also rightly concerned that journals might actually publish poor papers in order to seem more objective.
Special pleading. Lots of poor pro-alarmist papers are published and they have no issue with quality. This is not a remotely acceptable defense of their actions. But this bring me back to my original point:
in a field like climate science there is no objective way to determine which papers are bad and which are good. It all comes down to a question of whether other scientists see the paper as a help or a threat. That is why the lack of objectivity among influential academics in the field matters. It leaves us wondering what is really going on because we don't have anyone able to be a contrarian for the sake of being contrarian to find holes in our knowledge and protect against group think.
It's such old news at this point.
It is a current problem as long as there are people who refuse to acknowledge the systematic problems with the field and enable scientists who act unprofessionally.