Almost all the cartoons come from the Cranky Uncle book with a few exceptions. One is a cartoon I drew of Scott Pruitt. This was actually in the first draft of the book, which I wrote back when Pruitt was head of the EPA. Pruitt actually featured quite a lot in that first draft – which I think was a way for me to cope with the frustration of the endless series of scandals following him. My editor wisely advised me to trim Pruitt from the book, suggesting it would date very quickly. Sure enough, Pruitt was fired before I even finished the first draft!
Another cartoon I drew after the book was finished was a cartoon I drew for a Guardian article by Dana Nuccitelli. As is usual for Dana, his article was excellent and went viral so that the article got featured on the Guardian homepage – which meant my cartoon appeared on the Guardian homepage for a short while. That was fun!
This last cartoon was in the Cranky Uncle book, illustrating the strengthening consensus in IPCC attribution statements. In 2018, I sent this cartoon to Ben Santer asking for his okay to use his caricature in this fashion. He gave me his okay. Then in early 2020 (those pre-pandemic days when people congregated safely in groups), I attended a talk by Ben in Washington D.C. and was delighted to see he had been using that cartoon in his presentations. However, it bothered me that he was using a cartoon that wasn’t fully utilizing the 1920 x 1080 area (those kinds of tiny details really bother me). So after the talk, I went home, restructured the cartoon, and emailed it to Ben.
