[Fyron]

Erm... what magazine was this, Time magazine?

The Earth can not possibly be moving that much closer to the sun in 4 years... It is definitely either moving closer or farther each year, but not by that much. The Earth is something like 92,955,820.5 miles from the sun (first google hit on "earth sun distance"). At a rate of 760,000 miles every 4 years, we would have had to be twice as far from the sun around 500 years ago. There would have been a hell of a lot less life 500 years ago if we were 2 AU away from the sun. No event could magically cause the Earth's orbit to begin to decay at an extremely accelerated rate unless we were very close to it (far closer than Mercury). Total BS.

The moon causes tides by orbiting around the Earth and causing varying gravitational pulls on it as it rotates (from different location...). I do not recall whether it is slowly getting closer to the Earth or farther away. It is a very slow, almost imperceptible change, and will not have any significant affect for millions, if not billions, of years.

The magnetic poles of the Earth reverse polarity at infrequent intervals. Nothing special or dangerous.

Ice caps melt all the time. They also form all the time.

There was some deadly seaweed that was ravaging the ocean floor for a while, but I think they have gotten it more or less contained (albeit to rather large areas).