Global warming 'sceptic' has heart attack live on TV in parody of a Monty Python sketch
A climate change “sceptic” scientist, Prof Henrik Svensmark, has suffered a heart attack at the Copenhagen summit that was caught live on primetime Danish TV.
Telegraph -- Andrew Hough -- 15 Dec 2009
telegraph.co.uk
The world renowned physicist, from the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen, collapsed mid-sentence during a debate on global warming at the weekend.
While answering a question, the 41 year-old, one of the world’s leading climate change “sceptics”, spasmed, while making coughing-styled noises before collapsing to the floor, according to Danish reports.
While his fellow panellists looked baffled, Prof Svensmark, who argues the recent warming period was caused by solar activity, then mumbled “It's my heart”, before falling to the ground in agony.
The disturbing video of the incident shows him screaming and then shuddering, before his pacemaker kicked in.
Fellow panellist Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish professor who achieved international fame with his previous book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, was sitting next to him.
As others came over to help, Prof Svensmark's colleague, whose main thesis is that many of the most-publicised claims and predictions on environmental issues are wrong, yelled "call an ambulance, call an ambulance".
The show was halted by producers for 10 minutes while viewers were informed that Prof Svensmark had a pacemaker, and it went on because his heart rate had slowed down.
After being rushed to hospital, he is reported to be in a stable condition.
Prof Svensmark said the last time the world experienced such high temperatures, during the medieval warming period, the Sun and the Earth were in a similar cycle.
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