MacBook runs hot when battery is in

Maybe I haven't entered the right searches, but my problem seems unique as far as I can tell.
It's basically all in the title -- the MacBook gets very hot when (and usually only when) the battery is in. This started happening just yesterday and is now persistent. Several observations:
1. Without the battery, the MacBook is around 56 degrees Celsius or so, don't really hear any fans.
2. If I put in the battery (after putting the Mac to sleep), the MacBook very quickly goes slightly above 70 degrees and the fan gets very loud while awake, spitting out very hot air.
3. It has nothing to do with charging -- this happens whether or not the power adapter is attached.
4. It is not the battery itself that is hot -- when I remove it, it feels about room temperature.
5. I don't notice any CPU usage spikes with the battery in.
The most undesirable side effect to me, frankly, is not so much the noise and heat as the decrease in battery life with the fans running continuously full blast. My battery still has 95% of its capacity yet is only good for about an hour and a half of usage on a full charge, with the screen brightness set to the lowest possible level and Energy Saver set to "Better Battery Life." Just a couple days ago I was getting almost an hour more of use per charge.
I haven't tried too many things to remedy the problem myself since I can't think of too many things to try, although I did reset the PMU (shut it off, removed battery and power adapter, held down power button for 5+ seconds). I also have all the firmware on OS X updates including the ones that came out a couple weeks ago (I just went to Software Update and it didn't find anything new, either).
So if I seem to have eliminated the battery itself, the charging mechanism, and the CPU as a cause, what then could it be? If someone thinks the battery could somehow be defective and short-circuiting something inside the MacBook I'd like to try swapping out the battery with a friend's (I'd do it anyway, but it's a bit of a drive). Otherwise, it's straight to the Genius Bar (even longer of a drive).
Thanks in advance!
Dave
MacBook 2.0 GHz   Mac OS X (10.4.8)  

Still not sure why the MacBook would produce more
heat with the battery in, all other things seeming to
be equal, but I'll take it.
My reasoning is along this line. The "stuck" process is asking the computer to do something as fast as it can. The CPU produces heat in proportion to the frequency it's running at: when it's running at 2 GHz, it produces more heat than at 1 GHz. When the battery is removed, supposedly the CPU is throttled to 1 GHz. So even though the process is making the computer run as fast as it can, the computer can't exceed 1 GHz and therefore there's less heat with the battery out than with it in.

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