Peter Hadfield (born 1 July 1954) is a British freelance journalist, author, and geologist, who runs the YouTube channel Potholer54, which has over 200,000 subscribers. He has previously lived in Japan, and now lives in Australia.

Early life and education

Peter Hadfield's father was child psychiatrist Dr. Ian Hadfield. Hadfield has a degree in geology from

Kingston University Kingston University London is a Public university, public research university located within the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, in South London, South West London, England. Its roots go back to the Kingston Technical Institute, founded ...

Reporting career

Hadfield wrote a weekly humour column for '' The Mainichi Daily News'' (the English edition of the Japanese-language ''

Mainichi Shimbun The is one of the major newspapers in Japan, published by In addition to the ''Mainichi Shimbun'', which is printed twice a day in several local editions, Mainichi also operates an English-language news website called , and publishes a bilin ...

'') while living in Japan. He was ''The Sunday Times'' correspondent in Tokyo from 1988 to 1990, then wrote a regular column for the ''Daily Mail'' on life in Japan. Later he became Tokyo correspondent for the ''Sunday Telegraph'' and ''U.S. News & World Report''. He was also the Tokyo correspondent for ''

New Scientist ''New Scientist'' is a popular science magazine covering all aspects of science and technology. Based in London, it publishes weekly English-language editions in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. An editorially separate organ ...

'' for 14 years. His writing has appeared in other publications, such as ''the BBC News website', USA Today'', ''The Guardian'', ''The Independent'', ''The Daily Telegraph,'' ''The South China Morning Post'' and ''The Lancet''. In 1991 Hadfield became Far East correspondent for Monitor Radio, and reported throughout East Asia. During this period, Hadfield wrote and appeared on screen regularly as a correspondent for

CNN Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...

, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), ABC News (U.S.) and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). Hadfield's book, "Sixty Seconds that Will Change the World," about the potential implications of an earthquake in Tokyo, was published by

Sidgwick & Jackson Sidgwick & Jackson was an imprint of book publishing company Pan Macmillan. Formerly it was an independent publisher; as such, it was founded in Britain in 1908. Its early authors include poet Rupert Brooke and novelist E.M. Forster. In m ...

in 1991. A second revised edition was published by Pan and

Tuttle Tuttle may refer to: Places Canada * Tuttle, Alberta United States * Tuttle, Arkansas, an unincorporated community * Tuttle, California, an unincorporated community and census-designated place * Tuttle, Colorado, a ghost town * Tuttle, Oklaho ...

in 1995 after the Kobe earthquake. In 1995, Hadfield was one of a group of reporters at the

Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan (FCCJ) established in 1945 to provide support to foreign journalists working in Post-World War II Japan has historically been situated in the vicinity of Ginza, Tokyo. Today, the club offers a workroom fa ...

(FCCJ) that interviewed Tatsusaburo Suzuki, a lieutenant colonel in the

Imperial Japanese Army The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA; , ''Dai-Nippon Teikoku Rikugun'', "Army of the Greater Japanese Empire") was the principal ground force of the Empire of Japan from 1871 to 1945. It played a central role in Japan’s rapid modernization during th ...

(IJA) who had served during World War II as the IJA's liaison to the Japanese nuclear weapons programme, about the activities and progression of Imperial Japan's nuclear programme over the course of the war. Hadfield published an article about Suzuki's revelations in ''New Scientist'' that same year. On 13 January 2024, fearing the potential that the FCCJ could one day become defunct, Hadfield uploaded the full interview to his YouTube channel, where he also expressed dismay about what he saw as the time wasted by amateur tabloid reporters who did not understand science and asked Suzuki to explain basic facts about nuclear physics to them, referencing an instance of a tabloid reporter asking Suzuki to explain to him what a neutron was. More recently, he has contributed regularly to the CBC, NPR, and BBC radio programmes ''Costing The Earth'', '' Science in Action'', ''

The World Tonight ''The World Tonight'' is a British current affairs radio programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4, every weekday evening, which started out as an extension of the 10 pm news. It is produced by BBC News and features news, analysis and comment on dome ...

'', ''

Outlook Outlook or The Outlook may refer to: Computing * Microsoft Outlook, also referred to as ''the classic Outlook'' an e-mail client and personal information management software product from Microsoft * Outlook for Windows, also referred to as ''the ...

'' and ''East Asia Today'', as well as the ABC's Science Show.

YouTube career

Hadfield, known on YouTube as "Potholer54" and "Potholer54debunks", has made videos about various scientific topics, such as the science behind

global warming Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes ...

, including debunking

Climategate The Climatic Research Unit email controversy (also known as "Climategate") began in November 2009 with the hacking of a server at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) by an external attacker, copying thousa ...

"with gentle sarcasm", the

age of the Earth The age of Earth is estimated to be 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years. This age may represent the age of Earth's accretion (astrophysics), accretion, or Internal structure of Earth, core formation, or of the material from which Earth formed. This dating ...

(debunking arguments used by

young Earth creationists Young Earth creationism (YEC) is a form of creationism which holds as a central tenet that the Earth and its lifeforms were created by supernatural acts of the Abrahamic God between about 10,000 and 6,000 years ago, contradicting established s ...

to claim the Earth or universe are young), and how 'tricks of the trade' in journalism can be used to fool viewers. In March 2010 Hadfield penned an opinion piece on his YouTube series for The Guardian. Hadfield has debunked claims made by Christopher Monckton about climate science in a series entitled "Monckton Bunkum." His video about how

climate change deniers Climate change denial (also global warming denial) is a form of science denial characterized by rejecting, refusing to acknowledge, disputing, or fighting the scientific consensus on climate change. Those promoting denial commonly use rhetori ...

have claimed that the earth has been cooling since 1998 was called "true skepticism at its best" by

Maggie Koerth-Baker Maggie Koerth (born 1981), formerly known as Maggie Koerth-Baker, is an American science journalist. She is a senior science editor at ''FiveThirtyEight'' and was previously a science editor at ''Boing Boing'' and a monthly columnist for ''The Ne ...

. An analysis of

Reddit Reddit ( ) is an American Proprietary software, proprietary social news news aggregator, aggregation and Internet forum, forum Social media, social media platform. Registered users (commonly referred to as "redditors") submit content to the ...

posts during 2016-19 found that Hadfield's videos were often linked to from climate subreddits.

References

External links

Peter Hadfield's
YouTube channel * {{DEFAULTSORT:Hadfield, Peter The Guardian journalists Living people Alumni of Kingston University Science-related YouTube channels British atheists British video bloggers British sceptics Critics of creationism 1954 births British expatriates in Australia Educational and science YouTubers YouTube channels launched in 2007 English-language YouTube channels