on the other hand, "politicizing" science is inevitable, and obviously actual science does not directly draw policy conclusions. you sort of get the vague feeling that we could actually be ruled by scientifically discovered facts, or by dudes down in a laboratory somewhere. but ask yourself whether that makes any sense or, even if it did, whether that's something you want. that the earth is getting warmer does not itself dictate any given policy, obviously. science can bear on policy, of course. but i would strongly advise you to stare directly at the history of science for awhile before you just, for example, embrace the equation of science and truth. the nazis had a science of racial differences, for example, but that already had a hundred-year history, and stood at the origin of anthropology. science takes place in a social and political and physical context, and you had better start thinking about who's funding what and why.

really it's funny that the public/political cult of science - its ever-growing pop prestige as the only outlet of truth - has been accompanied by actual work showing the way scientific truths are produced within power structures: foucault's, for example (esp with regard to the social sciences as handmaidens of subordination) and latour's (in the phsyical sciences).

but any way you look at it, science - even if it were the only source of objective truth - does not itself, or should not itself, articulate values or make policy decisions in a democracy. and really what this is all about is annexingthe epistemic prestige of science for whatever program you want to push, like evangelicals annexing the bible in the same way: as the only origin of truths. the cult of science is profoundly hierarchical, corresponding to a technocratic model of governance through expertise, which means: we want power. 

what you need to see is that there are many and varied sources of knowledge and value. high-school dropouts have access to truths no ph.d. has ever clearly contemplated.