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The only effective thing I’ve been able to formulate is a large area of mirrors in space.

Properly developed, they would allow us to use heating and cooling to control atmospheric currents, de-emphasizing storm patterns and moderating the extremes.

Eventually, based on our knowledge of the sun and its future sequence of energy developments, we are going to need to protect Earth from a growing sun. Initially, this could be done with mirrors, and would provide us with a habitable planet far into what would otherwise be a runaway heating.

At the present time, Mars has the opposite problem. While we might need to try to finesse the heat transport on Earth, what is needed for Mars is a doubling of its solar heat budget. The technique I favor is rather extravagant of resources, but elegant in its function; I would put a doubly-reflecting mirror in the Mars/Sun LaGrange Point One, to increase the sun’s apparent size to a viewer on Mars.

Mars has approximately a twenty-four hour day, and with sufficient sunlight and additional atmosphere, Earth plants could be coaxed to survive there. That’s pretty much all we could do to make the planet more comfortable for settlers.

Presumably, they would have to get used to wearing breathing gear when outside, but most activities would be in controlled environments, and at least they could grow their own food, and produce their own oxygen.