One of your links:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/MediaAlerts/2005/2005061019247.html
“Direct satellite measurements of carbon dioxide will have as dramatic an impact as the Hubble Space Telescope within the Earth science field,” said Philippe Ciais of the Laboratory for Climate Sciences and the Environment (LSCE) in Gif-sur-Yvette, France.

“It should give us a completely new picture of something more or less completely unknown, showing us the carbon flux across tropical areas such as South America and Africa, where we basically have no data available right now.”

I agree that actually accurately measuring CO2 globally will have profound impact upon our understanding. If it actually works out that the accuracy is within 4 parts per million this will be great.