I feel like you didn't actually read my comment. Minecraft is a perfect example of how non-repetitive voxel worlds are processor intensive, and rather, this serves as a demonstration that unless fractal-like repetition is used then current day computers are not up to the task of detailed voxel worlds. (minecraft is a cpu hog.) It's trivially clear that this example is the result of repetition and not any breakthrough technology.

Also I feel like your example is confused, I'm trying to be polite, but I think you should do some research about what this is before writing a counterpoint like you have. (what you've written isn't really meaningful.)

Let's take an example of a whirl wind in a desert or dusty plain, in a polygon mesh you're not seeing individual sand grains being lifted from the polygon surface then flying around and landing somewhere else forming a pile, as you have suggested. In a voxel simulation you would however see just that.

Now ignoring post production, what you're seeing is a well textured, but (crucially) introduced, particle effect and maybe some surface deformation for the sandy hill that is being destroyed. (This isn't how the effect is done in film by the way.)

Translating (i.e moving) cows and other objects is actually more on par with how voxels work. I.e. moving an object through space and placing it somewhere else. So you were half right in your thinking that way.

To finalise my point, the tornado "mod" example that I cited wasn't me discounting polygons as you've interpreted, it was referencing this video specifically(i.e showing how voxels can trivialise the programming of advanced motion effects): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSEwU5IqZ4A