Comment 6 for bug 1688528

I've been using this in my ~/.screenrc to tell screen not to switch to the alternate screen, so I can use my scrollback:

  termcapinfo xterm|xterm-256color ti=\E7\E[?47l:te=\E[H\E[2J\E[?47l

This also enables mouse wheel scrolling of the scrollback (as long as you don't turn on 'mousetrack' in your .screenrc).