Fossil Fuels

[Jozomby]

In Chapter 15 of RoW Zahel talks about fossils, and how Nalthis doesn't have any, and Roshar likely doesn't either.  I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that Scadrial (and any other artificially-created worlds) probably won't have fossils either.  On one hand this is obvious, due to the timelines involved, but hey, who's to say a shard couldn't just create the fossils at the same time they created the rest of the planet?  Apparently, though, assuming Zahel knows what he's talking about, they didn't.

I was thinking about this, and I realized that, unless the shards deliberately created them, there aren't going to be any fossil fuels either.  No petroleum, natural gas, coal, etc.  This is super interesting, because it's going to really impact the way Cosmere societies develop. I would propose that Rosharans are creating fabrials, and Scadrians allomantically-powered-machines, not because that was easier than doing what we did on Earth, but because they can't do what we did.  They don't have the natural resources to have a good-old earth-style industrial revolution with coal-based steam power and such.

And then moving forward, are we going to see plastics and other materials that are based off petroleum?  I'm trying to imagine Mistborn era 3 without plastic, and it's a bit tough to wrap my mind around.  I'm even more interested than before to see how these societies are going to develop technologically.  It's going to be weird and awesome.

[spaidapig]

I have the feeling, that if one of the plantes we know has fossils, it would be Roshar.

Roshar is old as it was created by Adonalsium himself. And iirc for fossils to develop organic material needs to be sealed from oxygenic influence. What suits better to seal something off than the crem from the highstorms. Crem builds new land by covering everything underneath it.

Kaladin also recognizes the hidden patterns in the fossil by making them wet, just like the stones Tien always found when they were children. Maybe they were fossils as well.

[+Oltux72]

9 hours ago, Jozomby said:

In Chapter 15 of RoW Zahel talks about fossils, and how Nalthis doesn't have any,

Nalthis has no fossils of cephalopods for being too young. He said nothing about other fossils. Please remember that Earth has had large life forms over less than 20% of its age.

9 hours ago, Jozomby said:

and Roshar likely doesn't either.

No. He said that he thinks Roshar has no cephalopods, nothing more.

9 hours ago, Jozomby said:

 

 I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that Scadrial (and any other artificially-created worlds) probably won't have fossils either.  On one hand this is obvious, due to the timelines involved, but hey, who's to say a shard couldn't just create the fossils at the same time they created the rest of the planet?  Apparently, though, assuming Zahel knows what he's talking about, they didn't.

He didn't talk about Scadrial.

Scadrial has coal. They are running their railroads with it. And they are sure making a lot of steel for building.

9 hours ago, Jozomby said:

And then moving forward, are we going to see plastics and other materials that are based off petroleum?  I'm trying to imagine Mistborn era 3 without plastic, and it's a bit tough to wrap my mind around.  I'm even more interested than before to see how these societies are going to develop technologically.  It's going to be weird and awesome.

Plastic can be made from coal or gas, too. And Scadrial does have coal mines. They are mentioned.

[Jozomby]

That's a good point about the coal.  It makes me wonder how that developed.  The timelines for coal, natural gas, and petroleum are still mind-numbingly long - longer than we have any reason to believe the Cosmere planets have been around for.  

Petroleum: ~50 million years
Coal: "millions" of years
Natural Gas: Appears to be quicker, and I couldn't quickly find a number for it.

And Zahel clearly is talking about fossils, not just cephalopods:

Quote

The place I come from, it didn’t have any of these. It’s too new. Your world might have some hidden deep, but I doubt it. 

Right there, he states that Nalthis is too new to have the thing that he's holding.  Ergo, not enough time for fossils to develop.  It's pretty clear that he's talking about fossils in general, not just the one specific animal.

[+Bzhydack]

1 hour ago, Jozomby said:

That's a good point about the coal.  It makes me wonder how that developed.  The timelines for coal, natural gas, and petroleum are still mind-numbingly long - longer than we have any reason to believe the Cosmere planets have been around for.  

Simplest explanation is when Shards create planet (like Scadrial) they create also fuels like Coal and Gas.

[+Oltux72]

1 hour ago, Jozomby said:

And Zahel clearly is talking about fossils, not just cephalopods:

Regarding Nalthis, yes, that is correct. Regarding Roshar, no.

1 hour ago, Jozomby said:

Right there, he states that Nalthis is too new to have the thing that he's holding.  Ergo, not enough time for fossils to develop.

Well no. There is an error of logic here. For fossils like that to develop, you need life forms that are large enough and have shells or skeletons. Those likely do not exist on a young planet. On our Earth, animals like that arose less than 800 million years ago. The planet as a whole is over 4 billion years old. The Earth has about a billion years of habitability left. It is extremely possible to find a planet too young to have major life forms if you settle a terrestial planet. In fact, it is the likelier case.

1 hour ago, Jozomby said:

It's pretty clear that he's talking about fossils in general, not just the one specific animal.

Not for Roshar. He does not know whether they exist in the depths of the ocean. If they could exist, planetary age cannot be the issue. And Rosharan animals do have shells and bones.

[Jozomby]

35 minutes ago, Bzhydack said:

Simplest explanation is when Shards create planet (like Scadrial) they create also fuels like Coal and Gas.

Agreed. I suppose what weirds me out here is that (presumably) Ruin & Preservation created coal deposits on Scadrial, but Endowment didn't create fossils on Nalthis, and Vasher doesn't think Adonalsium created fossils on Roshar.  Since coal and fossils develop in similar ways, it seems a bit strange to have one but not the other.  Not saying the shards wouldn't do this, it's just a bit weird.  But I expect that there's probably quite a few weird effects like this, since so many planets were created artificially.  A couple other ones that come to mind:
- Mountains on Roshar. Brandon has stated that there's no tectonic activity, so are these mountains all sedimentary?  Not likely.  More likely Adonalsium just put them there.
- All animals on Scadrial.  Ruin & Preservation kind of "poofed" them all into existence, so following any kind of evolution record back would be impossible
- Gemhearts.  I don't know enough about natural gemstone formation to state this unequivocally, but it doesn't seem super possible for gemstones to form naturally on Roshar.  So we've got this strange bio-gemstone-formation instead.
 

The more I think about this the weirder creating a planet "in media res" is.  You have to make sure the atmosphere is stable, there's the correct natural processes to support it, the orbit is stable (or in the case of Roshar, stable enough for now) the ecosystems are balanced, the resources needed are there, etc.  I suppose it's not surprising if the shards skipped over placing something unnecessary (fossils) and just plonked down the needed end products instead.

[+Hoiditthroughthegrapevine]

17 hours ago, Jozomby said:

And then moving forward, are we going to see plastics and other materials that are based off petroleum?  I'm trying to imagine Mistborn era 3 without plastic, and it's a bit tough to wrap my mind around.  I'm even more interested than before to see how these societies are going to develop technologically.  It's going to be weird and awesome.

I have a feeling that in Era 4, we'll see fabrials that are essentially soulcasting synthesizers, like the food synths on Star Trek except that they can create any material in any form. Kind of like a 3d printer where the two inputs are dirt (or whatever matter to be transubstantiated) and investiture. Don't worry, you can still have your 70's orange plastic Stanley Kubrick style chairs on spaceships and space-stations.

1 hour ago, Jozomby said:

Agreed. I suppose what weirds me out here is that (presumably) Ruin & Preservation created coal deposits on Scadrial, but Endowment didn't create fossils on Nalthis, and Vasher doesn't think Adonalsium created fossils on Roshar.  Since coal and fossils develop in similar ways, it seems a bit strange to have one but not the other.  Not saying the shards wouldn't do this, it's just a bit weird.  But I expect that there's probably quite a few weird effects like this, since so many planets were created artificially.  A couple other ones that come to mind:
- Mountains on Roshar. Brandon has stated that there's no tectonic activity, so are these mountains all sedimentary?  Not likely.  More likely Adonalsium just put them there.
- All animals on Scadrial.  Ruin & Preservation kind of "poofed" them all into existence, so following any kind of evolution record back would be impossible
- Gemhearts.  I don't know enough about natural gemstone formation to state this unequivocally, but it doesn't seem super possible for gemstones to form naturally on Roshar.  So we've got this strange bio-gemstone-formation instead.

This would be strange, except for the fact that all of the Vessels of the Shards that were involved in world creation had a common homeworld as a basis for their knowledge of how planets work/are structured, namely Yolen (which has been confirmed to be an earthlike planet, though with two ecologies). And when a Vessel ascends, they gain a giant intuitive leap in understanding of matters of Cosmic significance, so it's not unreasonable to assume that with their new Shardic Powers they could have understood intuitively how the planet Yolen was constructed and then create a planet based on that template (ignoring the fain life), replete with features that would normally require processes that take place on geological timescales that instead were just created en toto.

1 hour ago, Jozomby said:

The more I think about this the weirder creating a planet "in media res" is.  You have to make sure the atmosphere is stable, there's the correct natural processes to support it, the orbit is stable (or in the case of Roshar, stable enough for now) the ecosystems are balanced, the resources needed are there, etc.  I suppose it's not surprising if the shards skipped over placing something unnecessary (fossils) and just plonked down the needed end products instead.

I think that when Shards are using their power, a lot of the fiddly bits of world creation are handled by intuitive knowledge of the application of their power. This is a dramatic oversimplification, but I think it's kind of similar in process to when you make a snowball, you don't have to understand the chemical composition of the snow, or understand the physics of the subtle alterations of the crystalline structures of the lump of compressed snow you are forming. You just intuitively make a snowball, and if something is off as you are forming it, you intuitively correct it until you are happy with your snowball. It's a process with feedback built into it, and with the insane levels of power that Shards wield and their expanded consciousnesses, I think it's quite probable that starting with an Intent to fashion a planet with a specific trajectory (like Scadrial) a lot of the necessaries for the purposeful trajectory of the planet were intuitively inserted (like coal deposits, or maybe even Harmony put those in because he wanted to be able to listen to Old Time Radio style Western Serials sooner).

[+Oltux72]

1 hour ago, Jozomby said:

Agreed. I suppose what weirds me out here is that (presumably) Ruin & Preservation created coal deposits on Scadrial, but Endowment didn't create fossils on Nalthis, and Vasher doesn't think Adonalsium created fossils on Roshar.  Since coal and fossils develop in similar ways, it seems a bit strange to have one but not the other. 

Right. Simplest explanation: Endowment did not create Nalthis. She found it or knew where it is in the first place.

1 hour ago, Jozomby said:

Not saying the shards wouldn't do this, it's just a bit weird.  But I expect that there's probably quite a few weird effects like this, since so many planets were created artificially.

No. We know of exactly one planet that was outright created: Khriss would not make that claim without researching the history of other planets.

And it took two Shards to outright create a planet.

1 hour ago, Jozomby said:

  A couple other ones that come to mind:
- Mountains on Roshar. Brandon has stated that there's no tectonic activity, so are these mountains all sedimentary?  Not likely.  More likely Adonalsium just put them there.

Yes. Though some may be volcanic. Hot springs exist.

1 hour ago, Jozomby said:

- All animals on Scadrial.  Ruin & Preservation kind of "poofed" them all into existence, so following any kind of evolution record back would be impossible

They copied Yolen.

1 hour ago, Jozomby said:

The more I think about this the weirder creating a planet "in media res" is.  You have to make sure the atmosphere is stable, there's the correct natural processes to support it, the orbit is stable (or in the case of Roshar, stable enough for now) the ecosystems are balanced, the resources needed are there, etc.  I suppose it's not surprising if the shards skipped over placing something unnecessary (fossils) and just plonked down the needed end products instead.

If you have future sight, you will know whether the ecology you are creating will be stable.
 

But you are multiplying entities without need.  The Cosmere contains planets inhabitated by humans that are not home to Shards. They cannot all be Shardic creations. The simplest explanation is that human dispersion from Yolen predates the Shattering. People were either transported by Adonalsium or emigrated conventionally.

[Quantus]

Regarding Fossil Fuels on Scadrial, we have two WOBs on it.  One says that most gasoline at least is biodiesel, but does not discount the possibility of Fossil Fuels.  Another (from 2015) says "There are clues about this in the upcoming text itself".  @Oltux72, you mentioned Coal mines in the text, do you recall when they were mentioned?

As a more general note on the relative necessity of Fossil Fuels, they are some of the very best natural shortcuts we have, but in most practical cases there are decent alternatives (Bio-diesel, charcoal, Bioplastics, etc.) which are inferior but not prohibitively so.  Outside of being one of better shortcut raw materials for industrial bulk chemicals, they mostly win by virtue of fuel Energy density, and Im quite confident the Metallic Arts will be able to blow anything natural out of the water, as is the point of the fantasy elements in any "-punk" genre.

 

 

 

[Jozomby]

This seems relevant, since there seems to be some disagreement about whether Roshar is artificial, and whether it has volcanoes and plate tectonics:

Quote

Questioner

Does Roshar have plate tectonics?

Brandon Sanderson

Roshar does not have plate tectonics, good question.

Questioner

Well when I met you in Orem, I was asking about frequencies. And you said it was more the shape of the plate-- The frequency. We've got no plate tectonics, we've got people who like to sing.

Brandon Sanderson

Good question. Now the weird thing that we would have is with the crem, we have to do some weird geology gymnastics, because Roshar is moving...

Roshar, the continent of Roshar, it's moving, right? As it gets weathered and things like this. Making Roshar actually work requires some really interesting scientific gymnastics. But one of them is I just didn't think plate tectonics, or even volcanoes and things, is just not something that is going to work on Roshar the way that I built it. So I just stayed away from all of that.  It's a pangaea.

Questioners

Is the pangaea built up of crem?

Brandon Sanderson

 It's a pangaea built up of crem.

Rubix

Over a long time--

Brandon Sanderson

Well no, because it was created at first.

Bystander

And then crem was on top of it?

Brandon Sanderson

...The whole idea that this is a fractal-- The whole point of that is, somebody built this. Somebody built this using mathematics that you know. They said "Oh. Boom. Bing!" and grew themselves a continent.

Firefight release party (Jan. 5, 2015)

I will note though that this doesn't state the whole planet is artificial, just the continent. This wob seems to say that the entire planet is artificial, though, given the unstable orbit:

Quote

Paleo

On the Discord also they tried to... because the moon is always like on the horizon and they did the math and technically it's possible but it would have to change its inclination I think through one hundred degrees every turn. Is it natural or is it also maintained by...

Brandon Sanderson

It is also maintained by the system. We ran the math on that one too. It, like, the Rosharans also are not in a stable orbit but this one's even less in a stable orbit, let's just say that.

Paleo

Somebody did like the universe simulator thing and somebody ran it to Roshar and they said it crashed into each other.

Brandon Sanderson

I mean they would, we find we got like ten, no like a hundred thousand years before it happens but yeah, the moons are very not stable on Roshar, let's just say that. I'm not convinced that the continent is stable either. On geological terms I don't think... if Roshar were as old as Earth is, you would not have a continent, is what I think. Even with the crem and stuff.

Paleo

The crem isn't enough... you said before that it shifts east?

Brandon Sanderson

That's what I think, I haven't done the math but that's what my instinct says that it wouldn't be enough. But we'll leave that for people who actually run the math until they... because I do not have time to get a degree in ecological science.

Prague Signing (Oct. 26, 2019)

As for Nalthis, I don't know of any wobs saying it is artificial, but if it's a natural planet, the only way there would be no fossils is if it was completely barren, and then changed suddenly by a shard to support life. Which really isn't that different from being artificial, since any coal, oil, etc would still have to have been created by the shard, rather than naturally.

Edited October 14, 2020 by Jozomby

[+Oltux72]

25 minutes ago, Quantus said:

Regarding Fossil Fuels on Scadrial, we have two WOBs on it.  One says that most gasoline at least is biodiesel, but does not discount the possibility of Fossil Fuels.  Another (from 2015) says "There are clues about this in the upcoming text itself".  @Oltux72, you mentioned Coal mines in the text, do you recall when they were mentioned?

I cannot find it. There are multiple mentions of coal plants and coal tenders for railroad engines.

[Quantus]

1 hour ago, Oltux72 said:

I cannot find it. There are multiple mentions of coal plants and coal tenders for railroad engines.

Fair enough.  Devils advocate side might be that Scadrial's idea of a "Coal Plant" is some sort of Charcoal manufacturing instead of mined fossil fuel, but admittedly that would not have been my first interpretation either.  

[+Oltux72]

13 minutes ago, Quantus said:

Fair enough.  Devils advocate side might be that Scadrial's idea of a "Coal Plant" is some sort of Charcoal manufacturing instead of mined fossil fuel, but admittedly that would not have been my first interpretation either.  

Making the steel for a city of 8 million people with cars, ships and railroads? And running railroads and heating some many homes? You can make charcoal, but there is a practical limit to that.

[Quantus]

14 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Making the steel for a city of 8 million people with cars, ships and railroads? And running railroads and heating some many homes? You can make charcoal, but there is a practical limit to that.

The the industrial process that gave us our big Steel revolution (the Bessemer Process) doesnt actually require coal or Charcoal for the primary fuel, it uses an oxidation reaction with the impurities itself to generate most of the heat; that was it's whole big breakthrough that let us start using it as a bulk building material.  "The Bessemer process allowed steel to be produced without fuel, using the impurities of the iron to create the necessary heat. This drastically reduced the costs of steel production."  And technologically speaking, Scadrial's metalurgy has always been a bit ahead of their other technological developments.  

[+Oltux72]

32 minutes ago, Quantus said:

The the industrial process that gave us our big Steel revolution (the Bessemer Process) doesnt actually require coal or Charcoal for the primary fuel, it uses an oxidation reaction with the impurities itself to generate most of the heat; that was it's whole big breakthrough that let us start using it as a bulk building material.  "The Bessemer process allowed steel to be produced without fuel, using the impurities of the iron to create the necessary heat. This drastically reduced the costs of steel production."  And technologically speaking, Scadrial's metalurgy has always been a bit ahead of their other technological developments.  

Well, yes and no. This is a bit awkward, because I have no idea of your background in chemistry and it needs to be understandable for other people. You may notice that for the Bessemer process, you need molten iron (well a molten alloy of iron and too much carbon). That is the natural result of smelting iron from ore.  So it is true that once you use up the coal you need to make the iron the Bessemer process will need no more coal. But you cannot avoid the initial investment needed to smelt the iron.

The historic breakthrough of the Bessemer process is avoiding a conversion that lasts for hours and requires the requisite heat (and a lot of extremely hard work) to make steel. That used to take a lot of additional coal. But even the coal required to just make the iron is too much by far.

Can you improve on that? Not really all that much. Chemistry requires a certain amount of energy (and extra carbon for alloying) to reduce iron oxide in the ore. We today are within a factor of 2 of that limit. At a level of technology comparable to Era 2 we were at about 10% efficiency. So no, this is unavoidable. You cannot run a civilization at the population densities Scadrial has on biofuels alone. Now, they may use them to run their cars. That is entirely possible. But those are a luxury good.

[Quantus]

52 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Well, yes and no. This is a bit awkward, because I have no idea of your background in chemistry and it needs to be understandable for other people. You may notice that for the Bessemer process, you need molten iron (well a molten alloy of iron and too much carbon). That is the natural result of smelting iron from ore.  So it is true that once you use up the coal you need to make the iron the Bessemer process will need no more coal. But you cannot avoid the initial investment needed to smelt the iron.

The historic breakthrough of the Bessemer process is avoiding a conversion that lasts for hours and requires the requisite heat (and a lot of extremely hard work) to make steel. That used to take a lot of additional coal. But even the coal required to just make the iron is too much by far.

Can you improve on that? Not really all that much. Chemistry requires a certain amount of energy (and extra carbon for alloying) to reduce iron oxide in the ore. We today are within a factor of 2 of that limit. At a level of technology comparable to Era 2 we were at about 10% efficiency. So no, this is unavoidable. You cannot run a civilization at the population densities Scadrial has on biofuels alone. Now, they may use them to run their cars. That is entirely possible. But those are a luxury good.

Fair enough.  My main point is that there is nothing magic or unique about Coal that is required for Steel production to develop on a planet beyond being a really convenient and energy-dense heat source.  And even though the initial step of smelting Pig Iron from Ore still remained, the Bessemer process did significantly cut down the total energy requirement to get large steel quantities, which is why it was such a driving factor in the Second Industrial Revolution. 

I think we're agreed on the general shape of things, and just see a different resource balance being struck on Scadrial.  I think that the supernaturally lush basin (that Harmony acknowledged he may have made too easy for them) is likely to provide conveniently enough fuel for their available Metal resources, between land and ocean sources.  Harmony crammed most of a hemisphere's worth of resources in easy reach of them, and their overall population is miniscule compared to its earth-era equivalent.     

 

Tangent:

As Im saying this, I wondering how much Scadrial might drift from Earth-standard in these specific instances.  For example, I would not be at all surprised to find that Ore deposits on Scadrial averages purer quality than the average deposits found on earth (which can vary widely); hell, I wouldnt be surprised if they didnt occasionally find depots of "naturally" occurring Allomantic Alloys dotted about.  Im assuming that the planet will have ample supplies of all 16 metals, regardless of the natural ratios on earth.  

In a more On Topic sense, Im curious if all the amateur-hour restructuring that Scadrial has been subjected to, first by the Lord Ruler and then by Harmony, might have unnaturally replicated some of the much slower geologic processes that would create fossil fuels.  And that's assuming they werent using some form of Time bubbles for their selective geologic manipulation, which might have more literally created the conditions needed.  

[Jozomby]

29 minutes ago, Quantus said:

In a more On Topic sense, Im curious if all the amateur-hour restructuring that Scadrial has been subjected to, first by the Lord Ruler and then by Harmony, might have unnaturally replicated some of the much slower geologic processes that would create fossil fuels.  And that's assuming they werent using some form of Time bubbles for their selective geologic manipulation, which might have more literally created the conditions needed.  

Ooh, I like this.  Even though we can just handwave most things that shards do and say "they're practically omnipotent" I love it when things conform to the rules that have been set up.  It would be really cool, for example, if we were to find out that when Rashek was moving Scadrial around that he was using a god-powered version of the gravitation surge, or allomantic push/pull, etc.  So who knows if Brandon had time bubbles in mind when he had shards creating/reshaping worlds, but that's the most satisfying idea I've heard so far for how geologic-timescale-constrained things could be happening in shorter periods of time.

[+Oltux72]

1 hour ago, Quantus said:

Fair enough.  My main point is that there is nothing magic or unique about Coal that is required for Steel production to develop on a planet beyond being a really convenient and energy-dense heat source.

Well, no. It also provides the reductive agent. And it is stable enough mechanically to use in a furnace.

1 hour ago, Quantus said:

  And even though the initial step of smelting Pig Iron from Ore still remained, the Bessemer process did significantly cut down the total energy requirement to get large steel quantities, which is why it was such a driving factor in the Second Industrial Revolution. 

I think we're agreed on the general shape of things, and just see a different resource balance being struck on Scadrial.  I think that the supernaturally lush basin (that Harmony acknowledged he may have made too easy for them) is likely to provide conveniently enough fuel for their available Metal resources, between land and ocean sources.  Harmony crammed most of a hemisphere's worth of resources in easy reach of them, and their overall population is miniscule compared to its earth-era equivalent.     

The can of worms does not stop there. If they are really using charcoal, why do they have coal tenders on their railways? They could save the costs of turning it into char coal and just use the wood directly.

1 hour ago, Quantus said:

 

Tangent:

As Im saying this, I wondering how much Scadrial might drift from Earth-standard in these specific instances.  For example, I would not be at all surprised to find that Ore deposits on Scadrial averages purer quality than the average deposits found on earth (which can vary widely);

That is the next can of worms. At least banded iron formations result from the great oxygenation event in Earth's history, in turn triggered by photosynthetic bacteria. An artificial planet should not have those.

 

[Quantus]

 

5 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

The can of worms does not stop there. If they are really using charcoal, why do they have coal tenders on their railways? They could save the costs of turning it into char coal and just use the wood directly.

Wood is a far less efficient fuel than the charcoal you can make out of it, particularly at the BTU needs of steam power (or even simple forges).  It has to do with all the additional lignin content and chemical moisture that can be released during the charcoal 'pre-burn', the Pyrolysis literally transforms it into a better fuel at minimal cost (since classically it can be done using the wood itself for the fuel by restricting the O2 flow (those Primative Technology youtube video's show some good example sof htis process).   

    

15 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

That is the next can of worms. At least banded iron formations result from the great oxygenation event in Earth's history, in turn triggered by photosynthetic bacteria. An artificial planet should not have those.

 

There is also the fundamental difference with what the Lord Ruler was Capable of when he was fiddling with things.  Unlike the others, he never actually took up a Shard, just got his hands on a massive cache of Investiture lying around the Physical Realm.  But literally every second he was working, his powers were dwindling to the point where he kept having to find new, weaker solutions to problems he might have blinked away a moment efore, had he known what he was doing.  One second he is moving whole planets, and the next he's stuck with ash-clouds, then just with minor lifeform tweaks.  That leaves a lot of room for accidental outcomes, or an example of "omnipotent" beings being able to make a Change that is not in their power to Change again.  Harmony at least had the benefit of all that accumulated knowledge, but it was still largely mortal knowledge.