OPINION/COMMENTARY

A Chilling Tale

We know that nature can kill. What most people don't know is that stupid ideas about nature can kill, too. In "State of Fear" (HarperCollins, 603 pages, $27.95), Michael Crichton delivers a lightning-paced technopolitical thriller that turns on a controversial notion: All that talk we've been hearing about global warming—you know, polar ice caps melting, weather systems sent into calamitous confusion, beach weather lingering well into January—might be at best misguided, at worst dead wrong. Think "The Da Vinci Code" with real facts, violent storms and a different kind of faith altogether. The book opens with the murder of an American graduate student studying ocean-wave dynamics. ("State of Fear" is the sort of thriller that makes even nerd-occupations seem daring.) A boatyard owner renting deep-sea submarines in Vancouver is also murdered, as is a man purchasing illicit rocket guide wires in London. We soon learn that such skullduggery is being coordinated, or so it seems, by Nick Drake, a Ralph Nader clone—intense, single-minded and (apologies to Mr. Nader's many fans) unhinged. He is president of the National Environmental Resource Fund (NERF), an organization founded by lawyers, not scientists, and devoted to pushing a radical environmental agenda. The fund is clearly modeled on the real-life Natural Resources Defense Council, whose annual budget is about the same: $44 million....