The first freedom floats are simple.Take something like a party barge.
But change it such that it has no roof.
And the pontoons are made of bamboo.
In fact, most of the infrastructure of the barge
is made of bamboo.
There are bamboo struts that connect
To a bamboo platform.
The platform has a cargo container system.
With metal tracks for bamboo based walls to connect.
The metal base of the walls
Has a system of gears
That will let the wall crawl
along the tracks
so the wall can be repositioned
or removed as needed.
But there are other components.
We need to have sails and ropes.
And a small amount of electronics.
We want the sails and ropes to be organic.
Maybe we grow flax or hemp to create the fibers.
We dump some Mississippi dredge on top of the barge
And our short little bamboo walls will hold much of the dirt.
We let the bamboo barge
Float free.
Assume you had million of these barges.
Sitting out on the ocean.
Soaking up the sun.
In something of a random order.
Until the hurricane comes...
And then the freedom float marshes
are martialed ("marshalled"? :) into action.
The sails are flown
And the marshes kite-surf.
Like a super-sized kite-surfer,
The barge skims over the ocean.
The electronics control the ropes,
And the marsh follows the swirl of the hurricane.
With a million marshes being pushed
Along in the swirl...
Each barge is a 5 ton anchor
Impeding the wind.
But wait!
There's more.
Because with a million marshes
Not only can we slow the hurricane,
we can make it turn!
Just as you have seen islands
and land divert hurricanes...
We can divert hurricanes...
With our floating islands.
Assume you have a hurricane
Out in the Atlantic... headed west.
The weather shows the spiral
And we want to push our marshes into the path of the eye.
As our marshes pass through the eye
Their different thermal signature has an effect.
We keep our marshes on the south side of the eye
and the eye is nudged to the north.
Once the marsh passes through the eye,
It unfurls its sails as the wind picks up.
The marsh hits a brutal wind headed south
And the marsh rides the wind south, moving fast.
But then marsh...
follows the swirl... and heads west!
So the marshes race west...
Past the center of the eye...
And then the swirl...
Takes them north... toward the path of the eye!
Call our marshes intrepid.
For they sail right into the southwest corner of the eye.
At this point, the wind from the southeast
is brutal, but the marsh knows...
The marsh knows the calm of the eye is ahead
So the marsh sails into the southwest corner of the eye.
So the marsh stops sailing in the calm
Or maybe it sails just enough to linger...
On the south side of the eye...
Knowing that it is nudging the eye north.
Or I could be wrong...
And the barges would need to be on the north side
in order to nudge the eye north.
But with a million barges
Absorbing the energy of the storm
We can divert hurricanes.
We can make it happen.
All we have to have
is the faith of a mustard seed
and we can move mountains.
Belief is empowering.
Let us believe we can calm the ocean.
Henry Ford once said:
Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.
We can do this.
Help us make it happen.
Amen.
