Our very first editorial, Much Ado About Tiny Temperature Trends, described the conceptual posturing that followed the elucidation of the effects of orbital decay on satellite-derived lower-tropospheric temperature trends.  Prior analyses had suggested a modest global cooling of -0.05°C per decade since 1979.  When corrected for orbital decay as per Wentz and Schabel (1998), however, this cooling trend changed to a warming trend of +0.07°C per decade, although satellite master John Christy later showed that the net effect of this and other corrections was to eliminate both cooling and warming as significant possibilities.  Our contribution to this issue was to point out that whether the satellite data indicate a warming or cooling says nothing about the cause of the temperature change.  Arguing over the current trend of earth's temperature conveniently reduces the burden of proof required by those who would take drastic actions to reduce CO2 emissions, i.e., it enables them to leapfrog over the need to demonstrate that any warming that may be occurring is being caused by the ongoing rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration.

Another important topic we addressed was occasioned by the Buenos Aires Climate Conference that occurred in November.  To coincide with that event, we prepared an analysis of the United Nations Climate Change Information Kit.  A thorough investigation of the statements contained in each of the kit's 15 climate-related information sheets revealed much that was factual, but also much that was clearly incompatible with current scientific knowledge.  The errors and inconsistencies were outlined in a substantial document that can be found in our Subject Index under the heading United Nations Climate Change Information Kit: Does it accurately portray the role of CO2?

Perhaps the most important scientific discovery of the year, in terms of the CO2-global warming debate, was the finding of Fan et al. (1998) - described in our Journal Review on CO2 Sequestration in North America - that the vegetation of North America removes enough carbon dioxide from the air to sequester the total amount of CO2 released to the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels in both the United States and Canada.  Almost no one had anticipated that earth's terrestrial vegetation had the prowess to accomplish such a feat, but the data are hard to refute, and they are compatible with the story that continues to unfold in each issue of our Journal Reviews section.

From a very personal perspective, however, last year's number one story on carbon dioxide and global change must be - for us - the 15 September 1998 online debut of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.  This "work in progress" has probably helped us more than it has helped anyone else; but we have received numerous expressions of appreciation for what we are doing, and the parade of visitors to our website continues to grow, with the number of total "hits" for the first three and a half months of operation topping 150,000.

So what will be the big stories of 1999?  In all likelihood, there will be no major findings of a scientific nature that will dramatically swing the CO2-global change debate one way or the other.  Instead, there will be slow but steady progress on a number of different research fronts that will someday bring us to the point where it will be abundantly clear to all concerned what the truth of the matter really is.  For the truth is out there; and given enough time to illuminate it by the scientific enterprise, it will ultimately be discerned and accepted by most reasonable people, many of whom are currently on opposite sides of the carbon dioxide fence.

What are these research fronts?  In the biological arena, it is our feeling that phenomena occurring beneath the earth's surface will begin to take center stage.  As revealed in the Biological Reviews of our first two issues of the new year, the intimate relationships that prevail among plants and symbiotic soil fungi are as many and varied as they are complex and vital.  And they are nearly all responsive, in one way or another, to the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere.  In fact, ecosystem species richness - which vies with global warming for top billing on the environmental greenness scale - may also be largely dependent upon what happens in this unseen realm of the soil; and thereby it too is linked to the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content.  And, of course, one of the ultimate repositories of plant-sequestered carbon is soil organic matter.

On the climate side of the coin, progress on modeling earth's total climate system will continue unabated; but it will be forever dependent upon what we learn by observation and measurement in the real world.  And here even the sky's not the limit, as phenomena occurring in the abyssal ocean depths, as well as the far reaches of space, are probably of importance.  Indeed, there may be no single key to resolving our current global climate dilemma; but with each step taken, both true and false, we learn a little bit more of what we need to know.