Let me explain the actual science in short. According to the ever more solid Snowball Earth Theory, towards the end of the Precambrian, the Earth was in the grip of an extreme ice age, with most of its surface covered in snow. Snow reflects most of the sunlight back into space, thus a Snowball Earth keeps itself cool. But snow also blocks the absorbtion of greenhouse gases by the ground and the seas, thus CO2 from volcanoes can collect up in the air. With greenhouse warming opposed by the snow-reflection-reduced heat input from the Sun, greenhouse gas levels could become high, even higher than today. What the researchers now found was that indeed they did.

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Now, Tim Lambert @ Deltoid says that Mr. Alleyne may have re-worked this agency report (compare for yourself with the Alleyne version I quote further down):

The Press Association: Ice age atmosphere 'warm'

A warm atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide may have surrounded the Earth in an ancient ice age, new research has suggested.

Scientists at the University of Birmingham studied 630 million-year-old limestones and found evidence that even large amounts of greenhouse gas could not stop severe ice and snow conditions occurring.

This could only have happened if the planet was nearly all covered in ice, researchers said.

Scientists at the university's school of geography, earth and environmental sciences, warned that such glaciation could happen again if technology was wrongly used.

If Earth's atmosphere reflected too much solar radiation - a process that could be triggered by a nuclear war - or if too many particles of sulphate were pumped into the atmosphere through industrial pollution or volcanic activity, similar conditions could occur again, they said.

In other words: Snowball Earth's surface was cold despite, not because of greenhouse gases; and a similar effect may be produced not just by ice, but whatever reflects off sunlight, for example soot.

What became of this when Mr. Alleyne (or a nameless desk editor) re-worked it? Something strange. Various forms of aerial pollution are confused in one paragraph (and the title and summary), even though they are distinguished in the next two paragraphs:

Researchers at the University of Birmingham found that 630 million years ago the earth had a warm atmosphere full of carbon dioxide but was completely covered with ice.

The scientists studied limestone rocks and found evidence that large amounts of greenhouse gas coincided with a prolonged period of freezing temperatures.

Such glaciation could happen again if global warming is not curbed, the university’s school of geography, earth and environmental sciences warned.

While pollution in the air is thought to trap the sun’s heat in the atmosphere, causing the planet to heat up, this new research suggests it could also have the opposite effect reflecting rays back into space.

This effect would be magnified by other forms of pollution in the earth’s atmosphere such as particles of sulphate pumped into the air through industrial pollution or volcanic activity and could create ice age conditions once more, the scientists said.

(My bolding)

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Now, when the mis-represented scientist's attention was called to this article, he drafted the following LTE, which he sent on 5 January (as quoted by Ben Goldacre @ Bad Science):

Sir,

Contrary to the headline about our scientific work that appeared last week on the Telegraph website, high levels of greenhouse gases did not trigger an ice age. In our paper in Science we provided independent evidence for a theory that a hot atmosphere rich in greenhouse gases could coexist with a cold, glacial Earth surface.  A planet largely covered in ice and snow (a Snowball Earth) would allow carbon dioxide emitted from volcanoes to build up in the atmosphere over millions of years.  We show that this actually happened at a time in the Earth’s history prior to the evolution of animals.

Perhaps it was the prolonged cold snap over Christmas that set the headline writer’s mind racing, but the contemporary relevance of our work is rather different.  A Snowball Earth could be re-created, in spite of greenhouse warming.  For example, a nuclear war would generate a pall of dust, reflecting sunlight away from the Earth.  Also, a proposed technological fix to global warming - launching a mass of tiny sulphate aerosol particles in the atmosphere - could be overdone with the same result.    Barring these horrors, we are left with the physical reality of greenhouse warming, despite the vagaries of our wonderfully capricious British weather.

best wishes,

Ian

Ian J. Fairchild
Professor of Physical Geography

Reaction? Refusal of correction. As Bad Science reports on 7/8 January:

...The Telegraph didn’t speak to Prof Ian Fairchild (they call him Dr), and their authoritative quote from him in the article was copied and pasted out of context.

Worse than that, Prof Fairchild has tried to post comments on the article which flatly misrepresents his own research, twice, but his comments have been rejected by the Telegraph’s online comment moderators, while 23 other comments have appeared.

Deltoid brought this in an update, too. Scandal was brewing. So what did The Daily Telegraph do?

As 47th published comment to the web-based article, they brought the professor's second (or third?) comment on 12 January:

Thanks to correspondent Shine - you are correct, we did not say that high carbon dioxide caused the ice age! I'm sorry that the Telegraph didn't get in touch before publication! There's a web-link if you'd like to read about the work: http://www.gees.bham.ac.uk/staff/fairchildresearchglacial.shtml I can also supply the original technical article on request.

Ian Fairchild on January 12, 2009 at 02:47 PM Report this comment

...and the next day, they re-wrote the article title and the summary of the web version. However, they left the misleading paragraph in the article, as well as the article's HTML title (under which it also appears in Archive searches) unchanged:

Greenhouse gases could have caused an ice age, claim scientists - Telegraph

Ice age atmosphere was 'warm', claim scientists

A warm atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide may have surrounded the Earth in an ancient ice age, new research has suggested.

By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent
Last Updated: 5:04PM GMT 13 Jan 2009

...Such glaciation could happen again if global warming is not curbed, the university's school of geography, earth and environmental sciences warned.

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I'll close this with two links courtesy of Bad Science: you can read a proper lay summary on Fairchild's work, as well as the actual academic journal article.