Let’s get the concessions out of the way first.

Yes, the environment is good, and should be preserved. To that end, environmentalists have every right to sound the alarm when it comes to ecological threats, real or perceived. And yes, our beloved game consoles suck up quite a bit of power.

But this new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council, innocuously titled "Lowering the Cost of Play" but spun by the group’s PR into the more venomous "New Report: Video Games are Energy Drains," is disgraceful in method and message. The money stat here is that the country’s video game consoles eat up roughly as much energy per year as the city of San Diego. Unfortunately, this claim relies on pure conjecture, and the implication is backed by otherwise shoddy pretenses.

The linchpin assumption is that 50 percent of America’s video game consoles are left on when they’re not in use. In the actual study the NRDC freely admits they found no surveys, polls or statistics to back this wildly speculative claim. They don’t tell you that in the press release. "While we are unaware of any user data revealing the percentage of users who turn off their consoles after use, we have found anecdotally that many users leave their consoles on all the time," the study says.

Excuse me? Anecdotally, my Xbox 360 gets turned off after play because it’s loud -- itself a clue that my utility bill will skyrocket if I don’t power down. Anecdotally, the study has already been ripped apart for this very assumption. More perplexing is how the NRDC cites Nielsen survey findings that console owners who account for 75 percent of total playing time shut down their systems after 5 hours and 45 minutes, and that’s only on the days they play. The 50 percent estimate seems to conflict with those survey results.