COAL CONSUMPTION.

Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 15, 17 July 1915, Page 10

COAL CONSUMPTION.

Nobody can say how long the world's oil resources will last, for no human eye (cays an English paper) has ever had a peep at Nature's subterranean stores. But since Stanley Jevons — just half a century ago— mad© the subject of our coal supply one of " religious importance^." there have been many gloomy warnings of what may happen when Great Britain, whose prosperity is built on coal, comes within sight of her last seam. Not many years ago a Royal Commission assured us that wo had just aboitt 100,000,000,000 tons left. Now, as we raise about 200,000.000 tons every year it seems a child's task to discover now long our coal will last. Fortunately the problem is less simple. Since Jevons's day new sources have been tapped— notably in Kent — and although we raise more coal than ever we are learning to waste less. But the wast© in combustion is still a&tounding. There is more power in a ton of coal than in a ton of 40 per cent, dynamite, says Edison, who has reminded us that " everything in nature would burn up were it not for the fact that everything except coal is, already bunted up," and that there is enough energy in & pound Jia.-taJio_it. roimd^EjL-'Kfirid'