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Portland airport grows with expansive mass timber roof canopy

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Re: Portland airport grows with expansive mass timber roof canopy

#181

Post by devilbunny »

katangafor wrote: post #175
Perz1val wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The carbon emission is not a problem, the imbalance is. When we burn fossil fuels, we use carbon that was stored by dead plants being buried. We take carbon from the ground and dump it in the atmosphere. Plants take carbon from the atmosphere. If were to bury the equivalent amount of wood, we would be equal. Buried wood is not useful, but building from it also locks the carbon somewhere else that isn't an atmosphere.…

Does burying wood actually work? I'm assuming it's a little more complicated than literally burying it, cause wouldn't it decay and release carbon at some point anyway?

Without oxygen, any decay is going to be incredibly slow. They're still pulling usable timber from trees that sank in rivers after being cut in the southeastern US 200 years ago. It's not cheap, but if you want some real old-growth oak, it's a viable source. And that's not a completely anaerobic environment.

Re: Portland airport grows with expansive mass timber roof canopy

#182

Post by matthewowen »

exegete wrote: post #141
wkat4242 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It boggles my mind why the US doesn't simply offer high-speed trains for easy distances like those. That whole Northeast is just screaming for it with easily managable distances. Boston, NYC, Philly, Baltimore, DC.. All easily high-speed-trainable. Boston to Portland too, for that matter. Instead of spending 1 hour queueing at the airport, spend one hour on the train and you're there.

It’s being planned, but projects like these are never certain: https://secretnyc.co/high-speed-train-nyc-to-boston/

My understanding is that the problems of NYC -> Boston high speed rail are purely political, and basically come down to CT resistance to change

The current track alignment is not conducive to high speed travel, and CT as a state has no interest in supporting a new alignment that is conducive because they would likely get _negative_ value out of it: as it stands, Acela trains pretty much all stop in New Haven and Stamford: why wouldn't they?

If you go with a high speed link that aims to speed up Boston New York travel, it's more likely that you have trains that skip those stops, because additional stops are much more expensive for HSR from a speeding up and slowing down perspective, from a percentage of time added to trip perspective, and for an inefficient alignment perspective.

In my view this is kind of a microcosm of the political problems of the geographically small states of the north east: states like CT/RI/DE especially have very narrow and niche concerns but because of their geographical position have effective veto power over regionally important things like "how expensive are the tolls to drive between New York and DC?" and "can you have HSR between new york and boston?"

Re: Portland airport grows with expansive mass timber roof canopy

#183

Post by bamboozled »

morsch wrote: post #114

I agree it looks nice, but dressing up an airport in sustainable materials won't materially change the fact that a flight Boston - NYC (one-way!) blasts through ~0.7t[1] of CO2eq of your yearly budget of 1-3t[2]. It won't change the fact, but I'm sure it'll make it easier to forget or ignore. [1] https://co2.myclimate.org/en/portfolios?calculation_id=75775... [2] e.g. https://ieep.eu/publications/carbon-inequality-in…

Yeah, take a look at this then…

https://celebrityprivatejettracker.com/leaderboard/#gr

Re: Portland airport grows with expansive mass timber roof canopy

#184

Post by [deleted] »

bobthepanda wrote: post #117
lotsofpulp wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At 2.5M people, Portland, Oregon metro probably cannot support many international routes (except Vancouver). And it has very few businesses that would necessitate international business travel. Maybe a flight to Japan, London, mainland Europe, and Mexico.

PDX is probably the last remaining major west coast airport that isn't going to be physically constrained, if anybody wants to start a new hub.

[deleted]

Re: Portland airport grows with expansive mass timber roof canopy

#185

Post by williamdclt »

devilbunny wrote: post #181
katangafor wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does burying wood actually work? I'm assuming it's a little more complicated than literally burying it, cause wouldn't it decay and release carbon at some point anyway?

Without oxygen, any decay is going to be incredibly slow. They're still pulling usable timber from trees that sank in rivers after being cut in the southeastern US 200 years ago. It's not cheap, but if you want some real old-growth oak, it's a viable source. And that's not a completely anaerobic environment.

200y is not really an incredibly long time at all

Re: Portland airport grows with expansive mass timber roof canopy

#186

Post by [deleted] »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #111
rootusrootus wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The PNW actually doesn't have these rules, although the rest of the country hasn't noticed yet. For all our warts, I continue to believe the PNW is the best area of the country to live. I'm obviously biased. But I've lived a lot of places and I keep coming back here.

It's horrible, absolutely terrible! No one would ever want to live there! Please, do not move there! /s

[deleted]

Re: Portland airport grows with expansive mass timber roof canopy

#187

Post by LargeWu »

closewith wrote: post #149
Perz1val wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The carbon emission is not a problem, the imbalance is. When we burn fossil fuels, we use carbon that was stored by dead plants being buried. We take carbon from the ground and dump it in the atmosphere. Plants take carbon from the atmosphere. If were to bury the equivalent amount of wood, we would be equal. Buried wood is not useful, but building from it also locks the carbon somewhere else that isn't an atmosphere.…

1 kilo of wood sequesters (temporarily for the most part) about 2kg CO2 equivalent, so for the GP's example of a single seat one-way from Boston - NYC, you'd need to sequester 350kg of wood. To sequester the ~800 Mt of CO2 emitted by aviation annually, you'd need to sequester about 400 billion kilograms of wood. So a finite but absurd amount.

Not only that, you have to build new wooden airports every single year to keep up.

Re: Portland airport grows with expansive mass timber roof canopy

#188

Post by bufferoverflow »

psc wrote: post #92
georgeburdell wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please tell me they kept a patch of the iconic carpet around

Such a notable carpet it even has its own wiki article! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_International_Airport...

Sorry, but that's some ugly carpet. Doesn't mesh with the absolutely gorgeous wood design.

Re: Portland airport grows with expansive mass timber roof canopy

#189

Post by insane_dreamer »

Sparkyte wrote: post #99
swalling wrote: post #66

The wood is pretty, but as someone who uses this terminal, the key improvement is that they raised the ceiling and significantly increased the amount of natural light. Here's a good photo of what it looked like before: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portland_Internation... The major functional drawback is that wayfinding for both arrivals and departures is much worse. The overall flow of foot traffic is way…

I believe the other improvement people don't pay attention to is the new TSA scanners you don't have to take your laptop out.

If you had TSA Precheck -- which if you fly more than a couple of times a year is well worth it IMO -- then you already didn't need to take your laptop out (or shoes off). (On the other hand I see no point in CLEAR over Precheck)

Re: Portland airport grows with expansive mass timber roof canopy

#190

Post by ciabattabread »

matthewowen wrote: post #182
exegete wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s being planned, but projects like these are never certain: https://secretnyc.co/high-speed-train-nyc-to-boston/

My understanding is that the problems of NYC -> Boston high speed rail are purely political, and basically come down to CT resistance to change The current track alignment is not conducive to high speed travel, and CT as a state has no interest in supporting a new alignment that is conducive because they would likely get _negative_ value out of it: as it stands, Acela trains pretty much all stop in New Haven and Stam…

It's not about skipping stops, it's about the amount of eminent domain you'd have to do to eliminate curves thru Connecticut's oldest and richest suburbs.

Which is why proposals to route it via Long Island and building a 16-mile tunnel under Long Island Sound get consideration.

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