The ecological impact of BitCoin

[bosshyip]

I'm not really familiar with the system yet, but do have a lot of questions running around in my head.

So, starting with this. Is there any way to estimate the possible ecological impact of people using their computers to calculate BitCoin cryptography? Is the actual processing power - and therefore the amount of energy - spent to calculate a particular amount of BitCoin currency the same regardless of the number of users in the system?

I'm not really sure whether or not this is a really stupid question, but, well... I presume other people have been wondering about it as well.


edit: btw, is there any way to get an email notification for new answers to a topic?