So, the cool outdoor blogs have been writing about declining outdoor participation trends for a while now. Which, given we're the only ones that read each other's blogs anyway, at least guarantees a receptive audience. But now science and the mainstream media confirm what our basic intuition and remedial math skills told us long ago; that people could care less about getting outdoors in the 21st century, and Google is to blame. And just to complete its quest for global domination, Google has made sure the results of the study published in this week's online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences were so arcane, nobody could understand:

Spearman correlation analyses were performed on untransformed time series and on transformed percentage year-to-year changes. Results showed very highly significant correlations between many of the highest per capita participation variables in both untransformed and in difference models, further corroborating the general downtrend in nature recreation. In conclusion, all major lines of evidence point to an ongoing and fundamental shift away from nature-based recreation.

Thankfully, we have insightful soundbytes from the authors letting the lay American populace in on the implications of their findings:

"Declining nature participation has crucial implications for current conservation efforts," wrote co-authors Oliver R. W. Pergams and Patricia A. Zaradic.

Really, you think so? Even for kids who score really high on the Shaun White Snowboard Extreme X-Games Playstation 3 game? Did you control for that variable, super geniuses? Didn't think so. Another nugget:

"The replacement of vigorous outdoor activities by sedentary, indoor videophilia has far-reaching consequences for physical and mental health, especially in children," Pergams said in a statement. "Videophilia has been shown to be a cause of obesity, lack of socialization, attention disorders and poor academic performance."

Holy overgrown hiking trails, Batman. Sitting around all day playing Halo makes you fat? What about the hand eye coordination kids are gaining that can be put to good use flying UAVs to hunt down terrorists? How is that not useful?

Wow, how happy are the oil lobbies with studies like these? They're (the studies, not the oil lobbies) about as useful as tits on a bull, to steal a cliche at this late in the evening when nothing more creative comes to mind. The Nature Conservancy, who paid for the study, might as well have just given the money to the oil lobby and said, "Hey, you know what, just drill in the ANWR, nobody is going to be using it anyway. We'll just make a really cool ANWR Wii game out of it. It'll be awesome. So go ahead and drill." Read more about the study's finding, from the Associated Press.