Many (most) phsicists would argue that chaotic systems are influenced on the macrosocpic level by quantum effects:
1. Again, appeal to authority is not persuasive when the quotes you use do not include either the persons reasoning, and you cannot defend
any reasoning the sensibly supports your claims.
2. This is not particularly persuasive at the point which you can't articulate why in the "chaos & repeatability" thread. In fact, you ran away when I demonstrated the huge contradiction that your claims entail. You are losing every battle, but somehow trying to claim you are winning the war.
3. Also note, that you are making inferences, that Sol does not claim. He does not say that
every chaotic system is affected by QM. Nor does he claim that
any system always will be. All he claims is that it is possible. Jumping from the possibility existing to the claim that all chaotic systems are influenced by QM all the time his a monumental stretch.
4. You've never shown that evolution is chaotic. In fact, I believe in my last post in the chaotic thread I showed that by your definition of chaotic ecology is definitely not chaotic. You never responded, so I have to assume you agree. At any rate, you are grasping at straws here.
And the important feature is that over long timescale the random factors become more not less important.
The most extreme example I can think of is that many Near Earth Objects have chaotic orbits. These are unpredictible over the long term, partly because far enough in the future the orbital path hasn't been determined.
An example that isn't a NEO is Pluto, where the orbit is unpredictible beyond 2-million years. Now if we increased our measurement resolution, this could be increased; but far enough in the future this is influenced by random factors.
1. Being specificity of the positioning of the planet and other large gravitational bodies, is not the same as being influenced by quarks. As far as I know, there is going to be just as much vacuum fluctuation on one side of Pluto as the other. Again. It is a
huge stretch to go from solar sized bodies to the influence of single quarks and leptons.
2. If the effects were to be significant it would take longer than the life of the universe for them to be significant. We get 2 million years of accuracy with the predictions we can make now. Lets assume we get 1 meter of accuracy today(which is generous, it is probably much worse than that). Planc's length is: 1.616 252 × 10e-35 meters. Which means it would take 2e6/1.616 252e-35 meters. That is 2e41years. That is longer than even the longest estimates for how long it will take for heat death of the universe. Incidentally, the orbit will have decayed due to tidal forces long before then as well.
3. If other non-quantum events intervene prior to the 2e41 years it will take for quantum effects to be significant, then quantum effects will not be significant. For example the non-quantum effect of the andromeda galaxy colliding into ours will show up in only 2.5 billion years from now.
4. This is what I was talking about with respect to effective granularity. Whether randomness exists or not, it is not necessarily an input to a chaotic system. Assuming it is, justifying it with hand-waving, and failing to do even the simplest calculations to verify your claims, is what I mean by being 'intellectually lazy'
The course of evolution, and the shape of ecosystems is heavily influenced by the history, and an asteroid impact tends to have a severe effect.
This is an extreme example, but still valid.
Over longer timescales, rare events are more likely.
Again, more handwaving, more claims without justification. No reason to believe QM is significant. Also conflation of rare events and random events. Finally your claim reduces to the claim that history/prehistory is random, not that evolution is
random. That is fine if you want to characterize our limited knowledge as randomness, but as I said above, I just consider it lazy. The more we learn, the less 'random' things appear.
Black squirrels seem to be the result of a mutation of grey squirrels, and semed to have been first reported in England in 1912.
This variant tends to be more successful than a grey squirrel, and so they have been spreading at the expense of grey squirrels.
Now the numbers of black squirrels are sufficient that you could talk about a slective advantage, and ignore random factors. In 1912 this would not be the case, as the small popuolation (initially one individual) would have been vulnerable to chance* events. As the grey squirrel population is not increasing fourfold every year, we can be confident that most squirrels fail to reproduce. Even though the black squirrel had a higher chance of reproducing, the odds were still agianst that particular mutation spreading.
That is a huge amount of extrapolation from a few sentences of pop-sci article. Do a little bit of research on black and grey squirrels and we learn that they did not develop from a single random mutation but are common to the Americas. Where they developed as part of a long evolutionary process.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Squirrel
Also from your article:
"At the time when grey squirrels were new to the UK, black squirrels started to be noticed on a Hertfordshire common. The first sighting is believed to be as early as 1912."
This quote seems to claim simultaneous introduction of black & grey squirrels. As the wikipedia article shows. Black & Grey squirrels have differential success depending on geography. So a population of black & grey squirrels was introduced to the UK, and the subtype that was most appropriate for the UK became dominant. So the only thing that you might characterize as random is the introduction, but that was probably by humans. So do want to call human behavior random? Do you want to call it directed? Either way it is not an issue that is particular to evolution in nature.
Sometimes I'm even wrong 
.