We who have fought on the side of the angels in the global warming battle may soon have our rest. Scott Pruitt, Trump’s pick to run the EPA in the US, will close down the government-funded global warming industry in that country, saving some US$2.5 billion a year. Soon there will be a government-commissioned report, the first on the planet, saying that global warming is not a problem.

While we await that frabjous day, we should be aware of the consequences. Nature abhors a vacuum and some sort of nonsense will enter leftie brains to fill the space currently occupied by global warming. As a matter of urgency we need something like another Council of Nicaea to formulate a new religion for the lefties to believe in. I have not been idle to that end and bought a copy of The Golden Bough to gain insight on what sort of rituals a new animist belief system might have. The Golden Bough is gruesome reading though with a lot of human and animal sacrifice to ensure good harvests. This is no laughing matter with animal sacrifice recently resurgent in New York City, at least in rap artist Azealia Banks’ apartment.

I served in the solar science trench of the global warming battle, part of the wider Culture Wars. There is no rest in the Culture Wars and all we who serve there can expect to die in harness. Part of that battle is ensuring that Western Civilisation has the right physical weapons with which to protect itself. In that regard, the United States, the arsenal of democracy, has scored a number of own goals in recent years with three big ticket weapons systems failures: the Zumwalt class destroyers, the Littoral Combat Ship and the F-35.  Originally there were to be 32 of the Zumwalt class. That was cut to three after it was found that the rounds for the destroyers long range guns cost US$800,000 each. Similarly, the Littoral Combat Ship was found to be effectively unarmed and will be rebirthed as a frigate programme.

Then there is the F-35, which is also our problem because we are supposed to be getting 72 of them at hideous expense. The shortcomings of the F-35 are well documented, by a US Government agency and others. I have done my share to that end, culminating in a book entitled American Gripen: The Solution to the F-35 Nightmare.  It was recently released by Stairway Press in Las Vegas.

It is good practice in public speaking to never mention a problem unless you also offer the solution. The optimum solution to the F-35 nightmare is the Gripen E from Saab in Sweden.  We could, and should, build it under licence in Australia. But let’s be realistic – that level of sanity and clarity is too much to expect from Australia’s defence bureaucracy. So that is why I entitled the book “American” Gripen – some very hard-headed people are soon to occupy the White House and the Pentagon. They will be driven by weapon effectiveness first and then value-for-money.

Our own political class won’t know what to do. One thing is certain – they will run around like headless chooks from Azealia Banks’ animal sacrifice closet.

David Archibald is the author of American Gripen: The Solution to the F-35 Nightmare.