Fire Tornadoes

Bill McKibben wrote in "Eaarth": "We imagine we still live back on that old planet, that the disturbances we see around us are the old random and freakish kind. But they're not. It's a different place. A different planet."
In the last week we've seen two filmed occurrences  of "rare" fire tornadoes... one in Brazil, one in Hawaii,  both  tropical locations.
Brazil-



In Hawaii:

Undersea Oil Plume Vanished?

The New York Times headlined the story on August 24th:
Undersea Oil Plume Vanishes in Gulf, Degraded by Previously Unknown Bug
Sounds like  unexpected and welcome good news. A hitherto unknown microbe has eaten up the undersea oil plume in the gulf, and not significantly degraded the oxygen content of the water in the process. A good luck double-header! The Times goes into great detail in the story, but one detail it left out was reported in the AP coverage, to wit: "The research was supported by an existing grant with the Energy Biosciences Institute, a partnership led by the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Illinois that is funded by a $500 million, 10-year grant from BP..."
So caveat emptor, and hold the champagne.

Democracy Now did a piece on the current status of the Gulf oil spill coverup on August 23rd.
And Dahr Jamail has been doing some excellent reporting from the Gulf.