Three months later, you still haven't bothered to buy a new light bulb and the towel is now so sodden it smells like it crawled out of a music festival toilet. Well congratulations, you have just engaged in what is rather grandly known as "Geoengineering". If you can't fix the original problem, add something on that will kind of sort it out for a while, maybe. More technically, it's an attempt to reduce the Earth's temperature, without actually dealing with the problem, the emission of fossil fuels at an unprecedented rate. Treating the symptoms but not the cause, to switch metaphors for a moment.
The best way to explain this is probably with an example; luckily for me Vaughn and Lenton (2011) have published a 46 page review of current geoengineering proposals for me to choose from. The citation is at the bottom, but if you can't access it for pay-to-view reasons, then the wikipedia page is as thorough a guide as any. So, to start with a sane and boring idea, reforestation of land (growing more trees) would lead to an increase in photosynthesis, decreasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. I don't see why anyone would get behind that idea though, when we have this option right out of a science fiction movie:
That is a computer graphic of a "Solar Shade", a giant mirror in space. In an idea so mind bogglingly stupid it might just be genius, the logic runs as follows: i) We get heat from the suns rays. ii) It's currently a bit hot. iii) Less sun = less hot. iv) mirrors reflect light and therefore heat. v) YOU GUYS WE SHOULD TOTALLY BUILD A MIRROR IN SPACE. To reflect enough solar energy to counteract the current warming the total reflective area would have to be approx. 4.7 million km^2. That is not only putting the equivalent of India in space, but sending up Mongolia to keep it company. Not only that, but we would have to add at least 1 Belgium per year if we continued at the current rate of warming. The most recent plan for this, was not the giant disc imagined above, but 1.6 trillion tiny mirrors of half a meter diameter instead. This plan does presume the mirrors wouldn't be stolen by a horde of magpies on the way up, acting together at last for the biggest heist in stealing shiny things history. Although this is all quite entertaining, it is complete madness, and sounds like some kind of supervillain chicanery. It will not happen. Plus, Belgium would probably object to being repeatedly fired into space.
Somewhere between the two extremes of planting trees and firing a silvery cloud into orbit, there are the wacky but plausible suggestions like cloud ships, which would use sea spray to add to the particles in the atmosphere, creating more clouds, reflecting more sunlight. Unmanned yachts, using the power of the wind to wander around the oceans on a lonely mission to fire as much of the sea upwards as yachtily possible.
Despite my derision, I do think geoengineering solutions are important. The real truth of the matter is, we won't cut carbon emissions enough to avoid seeing the impacts of global warming. Something must be done. Hopefully that something will involve a shift to renewable energy, which will be an inevitability when we run out of oil anyway. Until then though, our options are either to adapt to the new world we find ourselves in, or attempt to delay the inevitable change through these halfway solutions. Whatever the overall strategy, I hope we as a species aren't vain enough to think reflection is the only way to go, because the moment the space mirror launches is the moment I lose any residual hope for humanity.
Vaughan, N., & Lenton, T. (2011). A review of climate geoengineering proposals Climatic Change, 109 (3-4), 745-790 DOI: 10.1007/s10584-011-0027-7
