Really? It seems like a lot of words to say "unfamiliar material bad." Surely the people advocating CLT have thought of some of these obvious downsides, and have ideas for how they're addressing them. If those are inadequate, then talk about that. Instead we get "In my professional judgment it is driven by a certain "gee whiz, isn't this cool" environmental state of mind." Excuse me if I want facts and not someone's un-sourced, un-backed-up "professional judgment".
The comment repeatedly states that CLT is neither new nor unfamiliar, one main issue is that CLT requires many joints with individual properties (many points of failure with manufacturing errors specific to the people that worked there) whilst concrete behaves / accepts load as a singular structure.
Admittedly, this isn't an argument against CLT but instead against anything that doesn't behave as a single structure under load - but it does point out that CLT isn't a suitable replacement for all building materials everywhere. High rise buildings need the safety of reenforced concrete, with it's load handling and simplified calculations (due to lack of joints), and until something can perform in a similar manner it's not likely to be replaced.
