> You have to take scientists at their word.

The public is going to have to make a semi-to-un- informed judgement call regardless.

If they take scientists at their word, and different groups of scientists are saying different things, the public is going to have to make a judgement call as to which of those groups' credentials they trust more, or which sources they trust re: group-composition claims like "it's not 80% vs 20% of scientists, only a few of those 20% are accredited, so it's more like 98% vs 2%".

And that's an even trickier problem to solve than "scientists need to build trust". Which scientists? How do you determine if an opinion is from trustworthy scientists or from elsewhere? Even if scientists build trust, there will be very well-resourced forces trying to influence the public's answers to those questions.