In this paper, prima facie evidence is presented to demonstrate that, by the close of this century: 1) the world will be approaching exhaustion of its supply of recoverable fossil fuel; 2) the energy shortages engendered thereby can reliably be avoided only if immediate massive steps are taken to actualize the development and manufacture of important, as yet unproven, components of a global smart energy system; and 3) the world over, there is little evidence (as measured by funding committed for development and demonstration) that the key governments are seriously concerned.

Explores the open question of whether mankind, having run through its dowry of fossil fuels, will be able to maintain its advanced global society. Given our present knowledge base, no definite answer can be reached. It seems only common sense to believe that, to survive, a band of hunter gatherers must arrange its activities to acquire at least as much energy as it expends both directly in hunting and gathering and indirectly in essential ancillary activities, such as basal metabolism, which support the hunting and gathering.

If our industrial civilization is to be sustained, it must find renewable sources of energy to replace its finite and rapidly shrinking reserves of fossil carbon. Moreover, these renewables, even if intermittent, must somehow be rendered reliable and dispatchable, most probably by developing super-massive storage facilities for energy. Historically this has meant pumped hydroelectric storage, a technology that is well developed, reliable, comparatively inexpensive, and seriously limited by a shortage of suitable reservoir sites. The obvious solution is to excavate an underground reservoir many hundreds of meters below surface level and to exchange water between it and a surface reservoir created immediately above it and diked using spoil from the excavation. This variant of hydro storage is called underground pumped hydro (UPH) and is described in detail in this review, where it will be shown that: 1) the cost per GW of pumping station could be reasonable and on the order of 1 G$US while 2) the cost of storage capacity could be less than 100 $US per kWh and in keeping with the U.S. Department of Energy's cost goals.

This Special Issue focuses mainly on massive energy storage systems, but also includes a vision for small to medium sized storage and a discussion of the driving forces.

The generalized Stirling numbers of the first kind are defined, certain of their basic properties are discussed, and tables are given for the square grid k = 0(1)10 and j = 0(1)10 with l = -10(1)10.

A study is made of the step-by-step integration of ordinary differential equations of the first order by means of formulas obtained from the Gregory-Newton backward interpolating formula. Tables of relevant constants are presented.