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This week Gina Gettum and guest cohost Aviva Glaser [Hot in Here’s own Chemical Correspondent!] pepper news you can use, oscar reviews and stone cold grooves with helpful hints to reduce our own greenhouse gas emissions!

The News

• Climate Change is top national security threat and according to eminent economist Nicholas Stern if not contained “what we’re talking about then is extended world war.” Whoa.
• Bisphenol A is bad for your babies, your babies babies, and your babies babies babies.
• If a beaver lives on the shores of the Detroit River, but no one’s there to record it, is it really a beaver?: First beaver sited in Detroit since the 1930s!

Breaking news from our IHIH Style and Celebrity Correspondent Brian Lipinski – the Oscars de-greened themselves , BYO[tote]Bag is the new Vuitton and DeCarprio’s fixin’ to run an ecoresort island in Belize.

And finally we get down to the lady business…

• Green Cleaning: Make Your Own Non-Toxic Cleaning Kit.
• Make Up: Freshen up without slowly poisonin’ yourself.
• Knowledge is Power: Calculate your Body Burden Score.
• Cookin’: Buy fresh, not frozen.

Our Washington Correspondent Kerry Duggan takes us from the League of Conservation Voters to Capital Hill for Great Lakes Day.

Join the Virtual March to Stop Global Warming!

‘Til next week, keep it green friends and get up with the Get Down.

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Join us this week as special guests Andrew Brix of the Ann Arbor Energy Office and Jason Bing of the Environmental House Energy & Green Building Research Center get us up to speed on efforts to keep our homes and tree town green and how we can get involved.

We also had Greg Vendena from the Clean Energy Coalition based in Ypsi join us briefly on the phone (so a trifecta of energy experts as it were).

But First….

The News…

• Climate change will cause key fish species to move towards the poles in search of their formerly cold water climes, bad for commercial fisheries, but great for reuniting lost fishy family members.
• Birds are feeling the heat as well. A study by the Audubon Society has demonstrated that half of N. American bird species have been spending their winter vacations on average 35 miles further North than 40 years ago. At least they can fly.
• Thought we had to put on serious airs to show our sexual fitness? Check out these birds.
• New studies point out some vicious climatic feedbacks as sub-Arctic tundra begins to thaw, potentially releasing billions of tons of greenhouse gases.
• And! A ray of hope (the glass is one-tenth full): Paris (disambiguation: the city) digs deep to harness Earth’s green energy.
• Al Gore: on civil disobedience and COAL.

Fish Ain’t Biting? Great Lakes, Great Fish

• Try out one of Lake Michigan’s own delicious lake whitefish (Coregonus clupeaformis).
• Check out Great Lakes Whitefish, for more info and recipes so you can fully enjoy this “Best Choice/Good Alternative” great fish.

Eat me!

Thresholds:

• This week we look at the 1973 Oil Embargo and its effects on the global economy. The response was dramatic around the world, as our oil junkie veins had a serious bout of petrol withdrawal (c’mon man, front me just one barrel!). Naturally, we draw parallels with the modern day: dwindling supplies and an Obamian (Obaman?) “planet in peril.” Yet to keep it optimistic a discussion of creative destruction.

Audio[audio:http://archive.org/download/hotinhere/itshotinhere09feb2009.mp3] From the shores of Easter Island to the ovaries of a spawning carp it’s real Hot in Here. Join us this week for news and global grooves. In-studio guest Aviva Glaser delivers a hot dose of chemical knowledge, OJ debuts his new segment “Thresholds” and our Washington Correspondent Kerry Duggan gives it to us straight on where we find our green economy in the stimulus package:

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Be Informed:

• Science: Organic agriculture can feed the world. UifM press release.
• Top ten non-organic veggies to avoid.
• Find the major pollutants/polluters in your backyard.
• And!  You should be familiar with PALINDROMES.

Yes, we still giggle when we say gonads.  Sorry Moms.  Shout out to all the Mothers!

IHIH 2-9

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Join us this week for the news (including rethinking carnivorousness), an update from our always fabulous Washington Correspondent Kerry Duggan, and a journey through the nerdery of social-ecological systems theory to the dusty steps of Mongolia, the squishy shores of Lake Victoria and the Great Lakes of Michigan:

• With three different names for winter disasters [Xar, Tsagaan and Tumur Dzud] and temperatures rising at twice the global average, Mongolian herders and their herds are suffering. Big time. In the winters of 2000 and 2001 alone Mongolia lost more than one third of the nation’s livestock.  Summary of a Science article.
• With climate change comes variable rain, more storms and more cholera, malaria and fishy trouble in Lake Victoria and the Nile Basin.  (With tangential reference to the Maccinni and Yang’s study of long-term effects of early life rainfall on development in Indonesia.)
• The Great Lakes are changing [but still great] here’s the report we’ll get into more in weeks to come.  Confronting Climate Change in the Great Lakes Region: Impacts on Our Communities and Ecosystems

The climate really is a changin’, here in Ann Arbor, we’ve had the most snow [through January 30th] ever recorded… see this pdf for more details.

Music:

• Tsetseg Nuriin Tovoo by Morin Khuur
• Xux Tobolton by Altan Urag
• Wetende Mukolwe, Sukuma Bin Ongaro and the Sukuma Band
• It’s Your World by Gil Scott-Heron
• Chase the Devil by Max Romeo

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Human and environmental justice activist  Zo Randriamaro heats up the WCBN Studios with her wisdom, passion and careful thoughts.

If you are short on time, skip the news recap and head right to Zo at minute 16. You you’ll be happy you did.

Zo tells us that average temperatures in Madagascar have risen over 1.5 degrees C in the past 50 years.  Deadly cyclones, like this one last week, have increased in number. Addressing climate change should be President Obama’s number one priority. Zo makes a plea that addressing poverty and economic development must go hand in hand with environmental conservation.

Zo tells it like it is on the role of international financial institutions, the recent land deal in Madagascar leasing 50% of the islands arable land to the South Korean company Deawoo and the current state, and the importance of giving voice to those unable to speak for themselves.

In four short days President Obama vowed to close Gitmo, follow the Geneva Convention and freeze the salaries of his top officials.  Check out his weekly address here.

In related news:

EU Calls for Global Carbon Market.

Updated 2/2: New York Times: Madagascar Power Grab Fizzles

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A special Martin Luther King day and pre-inauguration show… We started live with both our It’s Hot In Here co-host Gina Gettum as well as our Washington correspondent Kerry Duggan on the line from Washington DC. They joined us from a League of Conservation Voters sponsored National Day of Service event at John Phillips Sousa junior high school in DC where solar photovoltaics were being installed on the roof among other things. Future Energy Secretary Steven Chu was even onsite and our intrepid remote reporters were going to try and talk with him offline and report back on future shows. Gina and Kerry told us additionally of the pre-inaugural festivities they’ve already attended on Sunday as well as all the energy surrounding the main event tomorrow where apparently over 4 million people are expected to flood into DC.

Our other remote correspondent Hugh was going to provide a perspective from Canada regarding the US changing of the guard, but was unable to join us, so we’ll check in with him at a future date.

We talked next with Lara Peterson who normally hails from inside the beltway where she serves as the Coordinator for the Russia, Europe and Near Asia Program within the International Programs of the United States Forest Service. She gave us some perspective from inside a federal agency during a transition from one administration to another, and told us all about the USFS International Programs.

Finally, switching gears, we spent the last 15 minutes talking trash with Tiffany Threadgould from Brooklyn, New York. Tiffany told us all about the history and motivation behind her business RePlayGround: “where discarded materials take on new life!” With way more energy than your average person would have discussing garbage, Tiffany told us all about her mission to re-brand garbage, giving examples of her products and designs – including a refocus room divider that she described made out of 1000 used film canisters. Her website RePlayGround.com also details various do-it-yourself (DIY) projects and how RePlayGround likes to support other organizations that share similar beliefs. You can get a sense of those core values by reading the RePlayGround Blog and the FAQ page… who doesn’t love FAQs… my favorite part from the FAQ page:

Q: What will you do when there’s no more waste in the world? Like when we reduce our waste to 0%?
A: We’ll be very happy people when that happens. Perhaps we’ll catch up on movies on a low-energy flat screen LCD. Or we’ll ride our bikes more. Cook more with locally raised food. Drink more organic wine. In the meantime, there’s a lot of scrap out there for us to tackle.

Happy Martin Luther King Day!

Enjoy the Music Playlist for 19 Jan 2009, with a couple of extra songs we didn’t get to of course.

In 1984, a UM SPH student just happened to discover abnormal concentrations of a known carcinogen, 1,4-Dioxane, in the Third Sister Lake in UM’s Saginaw Forest (just west of Ann Arbor).  This prompted subsequent discovery of dioxane in the area’s groundwater at various levels from the surface all the way down to bedrock, some places more than 200 feet deep.

1,4-Dioxane is an industrial solvent and stabilizer that is fully miscible in water.  It doesn’t adhere to soils like many other industrial pollutants, but goes whereever water goes.

For 20 years, from 1966 to 1986, Gelman, Sciences Inc (now Pall Life Sciences) used a reported 800,000 pound of dioxane manufacturing high tech filters and allowed an unknown amount of the toxic substance to get into groundwater surrounding their property on Wagner Road.

Multiple lawsuits, cleanup efforts and backroom deals later, several plumes of the stuff still continue to exist, with the major ones moving at about one foot per day through Ann Arbor towards the Huron River and maybe even Barton Pond (where Ann Arbor gets 80% of its water for 150,000 people in the area.).
Listen for an in-depth discussion of past and future of the clean water struggle and remediation efforts with Roger Rayle, Co-Chair of Scio Residents for Safe Water.  Roger has dedicated 15 years of his life to addressing this problem, making AMAZING maps of the plumes, and protecting our water!

Check out their Google Group for more detailed maps and info.

Who was that anonymous caller?

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Please share your eco-resolutions below in the comments! AND if you have a name for a person who eats meat once a week, post that too!

In the audio above which starts a couple minutes in we had the news, food news, and eco-resolutions for the new year discussions including 10 easy ways to go green in the kitchen and some suggestions from callers and over the interwebs.

COAL is NEVER CLEAN: Sign Here to tell your Congressfolk to ban new coal plants and to invest in genuinely, CLEAN, RENEWABLE energy technology.

Promised links to the following are forthcoming:

• Scientists responses: should we be developing a plan b to adapt to climate realities?

• Sustainable Fish of the Week!!!

• Rep. Conryn Drill Baby Drill news.

• NYTimes article discussing some of the drawbacks of renewables in the winter, like the likely rare possibility of killer ice falling from wind turbines… “those icicles have been known to kill people!” a la The Christmas Story. Personally, DJ Local will be happy to sweep off his Solar PV panels in the winter.

Music playlist coming soon.

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We had our usual news roundup… but we had a not so usual special guest in the studio with us the whole time: Homeless Dave. Dave shared with us: the premise for his blog Teeter Talk (voted best local blog 3 years in a row by readers of the Current), what’s up with his nickname, his bicycle delivery and hauling business, and his pedal-powered clothes washing/wringing, among other things!!! You may know Homeless Dave under his shall we say pen name Dave Askins… you can see some of his local reporting, photography, and illustrations at a new local news source called The Ann Arbor Chronicle which he helped his wife Mary Morgan start recently.

We had a weather, power outage, and climate discussion. Link to hand-crank/solar radios. Link to University of Michigan professor Ricky Rood’s Weather Underground blog and his recent climate post.

Towards the end we shared a 2008 Top Ten List from TreeHugger.com. Since everyone loves Top Ten Lists here’s another one: top ten green stories from 2008 from grist.org.

Music playlist:
Winter Song by Sara Bareilles with Ingrid Michaelson
Worrisome Heart by Melody Gardot
Big Jim Hawkins by Great Lakes Myth Society of Ann Arbor, Michigan
See and Be Scene by The Hard Lessons of Detroit, Michigan
Gotta Be Somewhere by Johnny Headband of Detroit, Michigan