With friends like the fracktivists who ambushed him at Saturday’s March for Science in Denver, Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper must have been wondering if his presumed enemies in the Republican camp — who actually agree with him on hydraulic fracturing — are all that bad.

The march, one of many nationwide timed for Saturday’s Earth Day observance, was organized to promote science as the basis for sound public policy. Though the event was nonpartisan, its overall political tilt, as noted here not long ago, was pretty much as would be expected of a gathering where protesters and placards warned of climate change, denounced the Trump administration and showed little love for fossil fuels.

In other words, a Democratic governor should have felt more or less at home taking the stage to offer a few words of encouragement to the crowd at downtown Denver’s Civic Center Park. Then again, Hickenlooper is a Democratic governor who has yet to find his exact groove with his party’s green wing.

Though he’s as passionate as any in the environmental movement about alternative energy and climate science, he also is an ex-petroleum geologist who famously guzzled a glass of fracking fluid to demonstrate how safe it is. That never has sat well with the anti-fracking activists in the environmental movement’s ranks.

So, when Hick began speaking, they began chanting. As Denverite reported over the weekend, the governor reminded his audience of the event’s fundamental premise — “Science doesn’t need to be political,” he said — even as his detractors interrupted his speech with decidedly political banners and jeers aimed at his views on fracking. It made for an awkward standoff though Hickenlooper weathered it with his usual aplomb.

The oil and gas industry long has maintained science is in fact on its side on this one — that fracking fluid, used to boost production of oil and gas reservoirs, is benign and in any event can’t infiltrate underground water aquifers. The fracktivists, meanwhile, counter with recent research they say reinforces their position.

Whoever ultimately owns the truth on the subject, the inescapable irony seems to be that you can take politics out of science, but not out of a political rally. Even if it’s a rally to take politics out of science.