Jun 20, 2009
Carbon Counter in New York Starts Ticking
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.
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