What if There Were no Moon?

On one late drive home last week, I looked up at the full moon in the early night sky, and just marveled at its beauty.  And I asked myself the question, "How much different would life on Earth be if there were no moon orbiting around us?"

This may sound like an arbitrary question, but it is a very legitimate one.  Trying to imagine life without the Sun would be a rather pointless exercise, because without a star to govern our orbit and act as a steady energy source, there would be no life.  The same cannot be said for the one celestial body that orbits around the Earth.   

For all of its beauty, the Moon, our singular natural satellite that orbits us roughly once per month, is, for lack of a better word, unnecessary.  Some planets have no moons, some have many (the other night, I looked at Jupiter through a telescope and beheld its four moons) - a moon is, in a way, a planetary afterthought.  If the Moon were to mysteriously disappear tomorrow, the resulting physical changes on Earth would be minimal.