Some good points but some controversial ones.

I think a manual QA team is very valuable. Sure the tests pass but what if the UI is confusing or disorienting. QA can be user advocates in a way a unit test can't be. I work in games so maybe it's just a squishier design philosophy but you can't unit test fun.

I also don't understand the worry about other environments. If you're automating deployments how is another environment added work? Shouldn't it be just as easy to deploy to?