Chris Baker

Energy efficiency engineer, architect, MBA. I'm interested in pragmatic solutions to build a more sustainable world.

[Strong Towns @StrongTowns]

Peter Norton published this piece in response to the recent Current Affairs article titled "The Strong Towns Movement Is Simply Right-Libertarianism Dressed in Progressive Garb."

Read the full story here: https://t.co/htnlolAbe6

[Serious trans vibes Comics @AssignedMale]

It does!!

[Chris Baker @EnergyChris]

@ElieNYC It’s like they don’t understand Per Capita.
So many crimes are way higher in rural areas, but because they are physically more spread out, it doesn’t register the same way.

[Chris Baker @EnergyChris]

What’s going on @DENAirport ? These security lines are outrageous.

[Shanu Mathew @ShanuMathew93]

Perspective: Lithium we mine today and that we'll need to mine by 2050 compared to other major mined materials today like Iron, Aluminum, and Copper. Measured in kilotonnes.

Great visual.

[Chris Baker @EnergyChris]

@SimonTheSorcer6 @DGisSERIOUS @Tesla Literally car shopping for an EV today, and won’t even consider a Tesla.

[Chris Baker @EnergyChris]

@bornwithatail_ Points for not being technically wrong?

[big_pedestrian @big_pedestrian]

Sewage and sanitation, another branch of civil engineering, are so good at their jobs, that system failure resulting in harm or death makes national news. Traffic engineering is so bad at safety that system failure resulting in harm or death is baked into their models and code.

[Chris Baker @EnergyChris]

@rcbregman Much like how we pay more for medical care per resident than any other country, and still don’t actually cover medicine for everyone. The cruelty actually costs us more than just helping people would.

[Rutger Bregman @rcbregman]

This is simply an extraordinary study. Researchers gave $7,500 (CAD) to homeless people in Vancouver. The result? The program *saved* money. It helped many of them to move into housing faster, which saved the shelter system $8,277 per person. 🧵👇

[Chris Baker @EnergyChris]

@aaronklemz Certainly not in a country that it doesn’t include the right to go to school without mass shootings. 🤦‍♂️

[A.R. Moxon 🦋 @JuliusGoat]

When I look at the video of a clearly struggling Mitch McConnell, I think about how scary and difficult that must be, and how hard McConnell has worked throughout his life to ensure that the end of people's lives are as difficult and scary a struggle as they can possibly be made.

[Lydia Kauppi @lydiakauppi]

The ruling class has no interest in ending homelessness because their presence serves as a constant reminder of the penalty for non-compliance in the system where we sell our labor for a fraction of its value

[Chris Baker @EnergyChris]

@drvolts Does that count as a prediction? Or just a statement of their corporate goal?

[NYTPitchbot @DougJBalloon]

Whether it's the woke left giving pronouns in their Twitter profiles, or the radical right gunning down Black people with assault rifles, there's plenty of extremist activity on both sides of the aisle.

[Chris Baker @EnergyChris]

@andibartz May I suggest the “yes, and” of being a divorced parent. Best of both worlds.

[Chris Baker @EnergyChris]

@NobleIdeas @kateknuth @MnPCA @GovTimWalz Congrats @kateknuth

[Chris Baker @EnergyChris]

@energysmartwv @JigarShahDC I used to say the problem with efficiency is the folks who have T8s want to know about LEDs, but the folks who have much older T12s aren’t even asking. Benchmarking helps us find the folks who haven’t kept apace with the newer technologies.

[Chris Baker @EnergyChris]

@energysmartwv @JigarShahDC I think some of that is selection bias. Folks who proactively reach out to you, or me, have done the simple stuff.
But I was at House On the Rock, a tourist site in Wisconsin, and they had literally thousands of incandescent light bulbs, and my Airbnb too.

[Chris Baker @EnergyChris]

@energysmartwv @JigarShahDC That’s where the passive house and super insulation folks lose me. I think I’m most situations solar makes more sense than an R-40 wall. Similarly, cold-climate air-source heat pumps and solar make more sense in most situations than ground-source.

[Chris Baker @EnergyChris]

@energysmartwv @JigarShahDC I work in efficiency, and I agree that the bound of when investing more in efficiency makes sense is the cost of solar. There is plenty left to do that is still cost effective on new and existing buildings.