3.64 trillion and counting ...

The red numbers flash past faster than you can count, ticking off the ever-growing number of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere.

The carbon counter, which can be seen on a nearly 70-foot digital billboard outside of Penn Station in New York or online here, was created using measurements developed by scientists at MIT in partnership with Deutsche Bank.

Deutsche is sponsoring a "Know the Number" campaign to educate people about greenhouse gases and their effect on the environment.

"We can't see greenhouse gases, so it is easy to forget that they are accumulating rapidly," Kevin Parker, global head of Deutsche Bank's Asset Management division, said in a statement from the company. "It will be a huge task to bring global emissions under control and my hope is that putting this data in public view will spur both governments and markets to move us more quickly to a low-carbon economy."

The bank is a member of the Investor Network on Climate Risk run by Ceres, a Boston-based green investement coalition.

Ceres spokesman Peyton Fleming said the counter tallies about 800 new tons of carbon a second.

"This is very important information about a problem that's obviously not going away," he said. "It makes clear how much investment we need around the world in new technologies and clean technologies."