1. The article is simply a summary and repetition of Judith Curry's announcement, and Curry is/was an academic climatologist.
2. Given (1) I don't really care what reason.com is, but at any rate, I think right wing think tanks are far less biased and far more reliable than universities, government agencies and left wing think tanks, so that's not a useful or convincing response. Climatology is flooded with money due to their claims of doom, so they're as biased by money and profit as it is possible to be. My experience was that their opponents are barely funded at all and object due to a belief that things labelled as scientific should actually be so.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/reason/