Here’s a leftover thought from the Ice Industry set, not quite resonant with the theme.

I mentioned that Enid Ice and Fuel was in two parallel businesses, processing and delivering portable cold and portable heat. The parallel doesn’t work well.

Ice is extremely temporary, almost as evanescent as electricity. Ice can only be stored in a cold place, which is redundant.

Coal is extremely permanent. It burns dirty, but it stores forever. Coal was already stored for millions of years before we dug it up, and it can be stored for millions of years after processing, without losing any of its potential energy. No other form of fuel or energy or food can beat coal in this department.

If we assigned value to materials based on their permanent storage of usefulness, coal would be the most precious commodity in the world.

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Hmm. Might be getting there! For fun I tried upjoke.com/coal-jokes and found a new British joke:

This Christmas naughty children will be given £1 coins instead of an expensive lump of coal.

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And now more specifically:

Hippie activists stupidly believe they’re eliminating coal and oil and diesel. In fact they’re raising the price of coal and oil and diesel. That’s why the oil companies have been supporting “climate” research for MANY years.