Apr 9 2005, 03:58 AM

I just finished reading State of Fear by Michael Crichton.

The book impressed me to a degree. By proxy, he proceeds to demolish the entire fraud of the environmental movement, exposing it for what it is: an apparent means of making a few leaders of the movment rich, while pretending to be doing something noble for humanity.

The story had a few moments where "suspension of disbelief" was stretched a bit thin, but overall, he did a very adequate job of building suspense, mystery and resolution.

The story initializes with several related but separate events going on with the purchase of technology, as well as the murders of certain scientists. There are good guys and bad guys in this story, as well as a character who goes through an awakening, reluctant at first, but rather commited to change as a result of direct confrontation with the enemies he was supposed to be defending.

A picture of how private groups form, accumulate funding and go into action without much government oversight is painted. The groups described in this book are eco-terrorists to the extreme.

All throughout, there are characters who, even when presented with the evidence, continue to evade the truth and demonstrate the Catholic version of faith in their cause--a blind following without testing the veracity of the principles they are fighting for.

One gets to witness the evils of evasion in pure black & white in this novel. And Crichton backs up his assertions with non-fictional charts from the USGS, NASA and other government and private climate monitoring agencies. The footnotes are real, the story is fictional, which makes for quite an interesting experience. I found myself pausing several times to ponder the charts and think about what a sham this global warming claim is. I also found some nice quotes from time to time. I will have to skim through and write them down.

Definately a worthwhile read. Keep an eye on a character named Kenner. He's the objective one in this story. There are others too, but he is the spearhead that works methodically and tirelessly to unravel the mysteries of the eco terrorists plans.