"Just because energy (mainly coal and oil) companies don't like the policy implications of climate science and are willing to pay lots of people to speak ill of it, shouldn't make it a politicized science."

It seems as though energy companies have an incentive to downplay science that provides justification for limiting CO2, but don't scientists with government funding have incentive to play up science that provides justification for an increase in government power? How could we find out the magnitude of there effects without actually understanding the research ourselves?

You just confirm my point. The very fact that you use phrases like "policy implications of climate science", and "subject's ideological enemies" shows it's a highly politicized field. You wouldn't say "policy implications of quantum physics" or "chemistry's ideological enemies".

In case you didn't follow Climategate, it look that scientists from East Anglia University engaged in politics a lot, including dirty politics; and they were nothing like neutral scientists merely seeking the truth and letting others deal with policy. You may find their actions warranted due to some greater good, or not, but it's not normal scientific practice, and I'd be willing to bet against pretty high rates that you would not find anything like that on any evolutionary biology department.

That doesn't mean their findings are wrong. There are plenty of highly politicized issues where the mainstream is right or mostly right, but this rate is significantly lower than for non-politicized science. For example mainstream accounts of histories of most nations tend to be strongly whitewashed, as it's politically convenient. They are mostly accurate when it comes to events, but you can be fairly sure there are some systemic distortions. That's the reference class in which I put climate science - most likely right on main points, most likely with significant distortions, and with non-negligible chance of being entirely wrong.

On the other hand the moment climate scientists switch from talking about climate to talking about policy or impact of climate change of human well-being, I estimate that they're almost certainly wrong. There is no reference class I can think of which suggests otherwise, and the closest reference class of Doomsday predictors has just this kind of track record.

If you want some more, I did blog a bit about climate change recently: 1, 2, 3.

I replied to your point about evolutionary biology here.