Carbon Counter in New York Starts Ticking

carbon-counter
The Deutsche Bank building in New York City now glows with the real-time number of long-lived greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Using numbers calculated by MIT scientists, the total reflects the estimated tonnage of greenhouse gases expressed as their equivalent amounts of carbon dioxide.

Currently, the number stands at over 3.64 trillion metric tons, but it will be recalculated every month based on measurements gathered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA's Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment. The number factors in all 24 gases named in the Kyoto and Montreal Protocols.

The counter was installed to increase awareness of the climate change crisis, but of course, that would all be for nothing if powering it was just adding to the problem. The counter is lit up by 40,960 LEDs so that it's ultra-efficient and is carbon neutral through the use of carbon credits. It would make a bigger impact if it ran off a renewable source of energy, but at least they've addressed the issue. Deutsche Bank itself has set a goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2013 and is reducing its global carbon emissions by 20 percent a year until then.

via Red Green and Blue

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written by John Rowell, June 20, 2009

I'm happy to see they're including ALL the major greenhouse gasses as identified at Kyoto - I'm tired of seeing CO2 identified as synonymous with global warming when there are several other gasses to blame as well, some of which are many times more potent. This is great to see there's a clock now - this will definitely raise awareness of the problem much like the national debt clock.

Greenhouse admission
written by Ellie, June 20, 2009

That number is completely foreboading. This is a good way to open our eyes to the truth about global warming. If we do not take action, that number will just continue to grow.

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written by Bob Rainey, June 20, 2009

If greenhouse gases and the Earth's temperature were related, then this would be an important service provided by D bank.

Eugenics and Global Warming Theory will share the same dustbin of history.

-3

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written by solargroupies, June 22, 2009

Uhhhh, yeah, MIT scientists, NASA, NOAA and 50 years of independent atmospheric data from as far back as 300,000 years ago versus a bunch of "dug in deniers with personal agendas and interests in old dinosaur energy... who should I believe? Glad to see D Bank is putting it's money on the former.

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written by john, June 22, 2009

At least the LED matrix will allow them to add more digit places.

the climate change challenge
written by Katrina, June 26, 2009

Well done Deutsche Bank. This is a great idea to help put the climate change challenge into numbers people can understand. At John Rowell: The reason people talk about C02 all the time is that complete organizational GHG inventories measure all the Kyoto listed GHGs, then convert them into metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (C02e). This makes it easier to compare apples-to-apples between inventory reports and when looking at year-over-year data. But it does cause some confusion, it's true. www.csa.ca/carbonperformance