I'd say that they will be used to help "zero in" their GCMs, since they have been extremely inaccurate to date. That's what they should be using the information for anyway. The political push for climate mitigation from environmental zealots seems to have Obama's attention. This bias has been an ongoing problem for the science since environmentalism "jumped into" the science in the late 80s. They worry more about showing an imbalance in the Earth's ecosystem, than they do worrying about what people think about "corrupting" the data.

There's always going to be a bias when a certain result is being sought. Let's hope the science is smart enough to maintain an "equilibrium" and not let environmental zealots control the information flow.

We already have a perfectly good Japanese satellite monitoring CO2, the results are interesting China is the biggest emitter USA next, but some tropical places like Indonsia and Central Africa emit large quantities of CO2

I expect it may confirm the under reported recent studies that suggest the U.S. & north America in general is actually a "carbon sink" instead of a gross carbon emitter.

If so the U.S. should immediately aggressively push for a world wide co2 tax so we could corner a large chunk of world carbon credits & sell them to our De facto manufacturing plants in the Far East & India, then use the huge profit to eliminate or drastically reduce taxes.

Hard to beat "money for nothing"!!!

I also expect that after the next rain shower pigs will fly over the rainbow & drop gold dust on my house.

Watching tailpipes and smokestacks. They so stated this. However, I see the greenies already gearing up for a defensive action in case the results are contrary to their agenda.

Actually, you answered the question before you gave your prediction. The purpose is to advance scientific knowledge of CO2 sources and sinks. I'll predict that, like all scientific knowledge, it will be ignored or misinterpreted for political and religious purposes.

observing carbon and the like...

Here's a pretty good description of this recently launched satellite here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbiting_Carbon_Observatory

I note that it can gather data on the geographic distribution of sources and sinks of CO2.

I'll be the first to answer my own question. I'm willing to bet that Obama is going to trot out a global map of CO2 sources showing India and China as hotspots and use it for political pressure to garner climate agreements.

What are your predictions?