But they are frequently replaced by minor varients of themselves. We are currently running through the tree-of-life with a chainsaw and destroying entire branches (although not in this case). In terms of species loss humanity obviously has the ability to reach dinasaur-asteroid-killer proportions.

In terms of sheer infornmation loss that should be considered a disaster. On a more selfish level it also irreversivbly closes potential sources of knowledge and utility that we don't yet know the value of. Consider the Australian aborigines who upon arrival drove all the local potentially domesticatable animals to extinction thus leaving them in a technological rut for 60kyr.

In terms of the ibex clones, I'm not sure this is a wise use of resoucres. Resources now need to be spent sampling/storing/cataloging all the species still alive as the rate of extinction is so great.

Does a realistic perspective really make an argument not worth reading?

There have been many places and times since 15th century europe where people have been reduced to a "serflike" state, modern Finns ain't close to it though. The workers of 20th-century european colonial possessions or soviet russia perhaps?

I don't think it needs to drive a full sized boat. This is just an easy propulsion system with no moving parts that would be perfect for small robotic vehicles.

We are only just beginning to really monitor the world, lots of technologies today are coming out that won't improve on existing tech for power but will beat it on efficiency, size or maintance. Future societies will need to monitor every km^2 of ocean to manage fishing resources and borders, all the lakes and rivers will be monitored for pollution and flooding

The earth IS amazingly exceptional, we just don't know how unique it is.

Frozen ice on Mars is great, and may make the Herculian job of colonising it or starting outposts later a bit easier. It still looks like its a sterile rock, raising self-sustaining colonies on antarctica and in the seas will be far easier in the short term (100 years).

In contrast earth is a full ecology with macroscopic life so large it is visible from space. There may be 1 or even 10^6 equivalent biospheres in the galaxy (we don't know) this still means terran planets are unlikely to be common or close together. This is one of the reasons we should be developing science but also conserving the uniqueness that is our biological heritage.

I would also add the British/American clearances of the Indians for Lebensraum during the early westward expansion. America and the world (or parts thereof) have grown amazingly more moral over the past 400 years. We have a long way down to slide before we get anywhere near the psycopathic behavior of our forefathers, even if they only directed towards subsets of the population. Not saying we should be heading in that direction though.....

These web-photos look cool but are misleading.

The man-made compounds like LSD have never gone through rounds of selection to increase their effects on insects/arachnids - thus no change in web. In contrast other compounds (caffine for example) are plant poisons specifically evolved to prevent predation by insects. That they give humans a brief jolly is incidental. Incidental but selected for as we tried every plant out there to find the handful with poisons that give us a brief high but won't kill us. Arachnid neuronal systems are closer to insects than ours are hence the insect poisons have more of their original intended effect. Thus the spider responses are completly different to human responses. Always be cautious of animal tests :)

Still, the webs make a great T-shirt