But the climate change debate isn't over yet. At least one scientist interviewed for the documentary felt his views were represented unfairly, and others have challenged the documentary's use of science.

"The Great Global Warming Swindle" advances the hypothesis published in February in the book "The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change."

Co-written by Danish Space Research Institute physicist Henrik Svensmark and former New Scientist editor Nigel Calder, the book explains how an interplay between cosmic rays and the sun could affect the temperature of the Earth.

Cosmic rays cause clouds to form, according to Svensmark, and the sun's magnetic field blocks the cosmic rays. A natural increase in the sun's magnetic field over the twentieth century reduced cloud cover and produced the temperature increase blamed by many on human use of fossil fuels.

"It all came down to the sun," the documentary's narrator concluded.

Much of the documentary, though, is aimed at unseating the rival hypothesis that anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) cause warming.

Director Martin Durkin interviewed credentialed skeptics, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor of Meteorology Richard Lindzen, University of Alabama Professor of Atmospheric Science John Christy and University of Virginia Research Professor of Environmental Sciences Patrick J. Michaels.

Misleading Use of Science

But several days after the documentary aired, the UK newspaper The Independent reported that one of the film's interviewees had made a complaint.

"Professor Carl Wunsch, professor of physical oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he had been 'completely misrepresented' by the programme, and 'totally misled' on its content," the newspaper reported.

Several misrepresentations of climate science in the documentary also appeared on the climate scientists' commentary Web site, www.realclimate.org.

In one example, the Web site's authors examine the film's claim that the 20th century CO2 record doesn't match the temperature record.

The current increase in the Earth's average temperature is documented as beginning around the time of the Industrial Revolution -- coinciding with increased use of fossil fuels and the associated release of CO2, proponents of anthropogenic warming point out.

The documentary doesn't dispute the general increase in temperature but focuses on a several-decades-long dip that started in the 1940s.

That's about the time industrial production and CO2 emissions took off heavily, the documentary states, and the fact that temperature dropped as CO2 rose means that anthropogenic CO2 isn't warming the Earth.

Unmentioned, though, is what is known as "global dimming." The accelerated industrial production that increased CO2 emissions also increased smog-forming emissions. Those pollutants began to decrease through implementation of the 1970 Clean Air Act in the U.S. and similar policies in Europe.

"In 1975, the masked effects of trapped greenhouse gases finally started to emerge and have dominated ever since," wrote Executive Editor Taylor Cox in the May 12, 2006, Stanford Review in a standard explanation of the data.

Realclimate.org also points to the documentary's treatment of Antarctic ice core data that the anthropogenic warming hypothesis relies on for evidence of a relationship between CO2 and temperature.

"The link is the wrong way around," said University of Ottawa Professor of Earth Sciences Ian Clark in the documentary. "Temperature is leading CO2 by 800 years."

An interview with Wunsch, the MIT oceanographer, seems to support this by showing that, when temperature goes up, the oceans release CO2.

But while the ice core data show that CO2 is released as the oceans warm at the ends of ice ages every 100,000 years or so, according to Scripps Institution of Oceanography Professor of Geosciences Jeff Severinghaus, that's a temporary relationship that doesn't contradict anthropogenic warming.

As the Earth and its oceans begin to warm, "this process also causes CO2 to start rising, about 800 years later. Then CO2 further warms the whole planet, because of its heat-trapping properties," Severinghaus wrote on realclimate.org.

"In other words, CO2 does not initiate the warmings, but acts as an amplifier once they are under way," he wrote.

Wunsch's Complaint

Wunsch sent a letter to the documentary's producers two days after it aired complaining about the presentation of his work in the film.

"I thought I was being asked to appear in a film that would discuss in a balanced way the complicated elements of understanding of climate change," he wrote.

"I spent hours in the interview describing ... the ways in which some of the more dramatic elements get exaggerated in the media relative to more realistic, potentially truly catastrophic issues, such as the implications of the oncoming sea level rise," he continued.

"As I made clear, both in the preliminary discussions, and in the interview itself, I believe that global warming is a very serious threat that needs equally serious discussion and no one seeing this film could possibly deduce that," he concluded.

Wunsch asked that the film never again be seen publicly with his participation included.

Filmmaker Durkin was previously found by the UK's Independent Television Commission to have edited interviews with four contributors to another series in a way that distorted or misrepresented their known views, The Independent reported.