My basic takeaway from Fox's coverage of lightbulb efficiency standards is that if they were given the chance, compact fluorescent light bulbs would kill me and everyone I care about.

For the past several months, conservative media figures - led, as usual, by Fox - have spent a great deal of time misrepresenting light bulb efficiency standards and cheerleading GOP attempts to overturn them.

In addition to incorrectly claiming that these standards would amount to a ban on incandescent bulbs, Fox News personalities and guests have repeatedly tried to convince viewers that compact fluorescent light bulbs are a serious health hazard because they contain mercury. (Lab researchers and product safety groups disagree.)

Fox Business host Liz MacDonald told viewers that “some say” the bulbs “blow up,” adding, “what a way to save energy: incinerate your home.” Andrew Napolitano claimed that the standards will “force us into some technology which is actually harmful.” Stuart Varney, explaining that he has a “bee in [his] bonnet” about light bulb standards, announced that he doesn't want to government forcing him “to buy those squiggly little nasty mercury-filled things.” In a separate rant, Varney complained that the government is “sticking a mercury light bulb down my throat and saying, 'it's good for you.'”

Greg Gutfeld said that “when that thing breaks, you've gotta move out,” and likened using CFLs to “inviting a drug-addicted stripper to live with you.” Eric Bolling suggested that when a CFL breaks, “you have to go through hazmat cleanups.” Holding up a CFL during an appearance on Fox Business, conservative columnist Deroy Murdock said that “the mercury vapor in here, if we inhaled it, could cause liver damage, lung damage, neurological problems.”

Because these bulbs could supposedly “incinerate your home” and force you “to move out” if they break, it seems strange that News Corp would give them to their employees for Christmas. Yet, according to Brit Hume, that's what News Corp. did in 2006.

On the February 7, 2007, edition of Special Report, then-anchor Brit Hume introduced a joke Stephen Colbert had made at his expense by saying, “Finally tonight, they're on sale everywhere. FOX NEWS employees even got them for Christmas, a gift from the parent company, News Corporation. What are they? They're those new fluorescent light bulbs that now come in all kinds of different strengths and sizes.”

Obviously, News Corp. wasn't trying to harm its employees by giving them CFLs. This just highlights, yet again, the disconnect between Fox News and its corporate parent on climate science and any issues related to conservation. Though News Corp. has made a public effort to reduce its carbon footprint and combat climate change, Fox News has long been at the forefront of sowing doubts about established climate science and vilifying environmentalism.

In April, we highlighted how News Corp. cashes in on both sides of the climate fight:

“Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats,” Rupert Murdoch declared in a 2007 speech announcing News Corp.'s new climate initiative. “We may not agree on the extent, but we certainly can't afford the risk of inaction.”

“We can do something that's unique, different from just any other company,” said Murdoch. “We can set an example, and we can reach our audiences. Our audience's carbon footprint is 10,000 times bigger than ours.

”That's the carbon footprint we want to conquer."

Four years later, News Corp. has achieved its goal of carbon neutrality. Yet no media outlet in the United States does more to aggressively undermine climate science than Fox News. The network regularly distorts data, fabricates controversies, and smears climate experts. One of Fox's top editors has even ordered reporters to cast doubt on the basic fact that the planet is warming. And Sean Hannity has used his Fox show to tell viewers that global warming “doesn't exist.”

The contrast between what News Corp.'s chairman says and what its employees actually do is a stark illustration of the company's attempt to play both sides of the climate issue