"The Moon provokes tides on Earth and vice-versa.

There is no such influence from the Sun on Earth because the distance between the Moon and the Earth is 0.0025 times that of the distance between the Sun and the Earth.
Tides depend on distances more than masses."

This is simply wrong. The Sun may be far away but it's big.
But just because Raoul is wrong, it doesn't in any way mean "pops" is correct.
But "Pops" is correct in sense that the Sun's distance is important in terms of global climate.

TB: "The Earth is actually closest to the sun in the middle of winter. Go figure."
Of course in Southern Hemisphere it's summer and it hasn't always been this way.

"It is now believed that a cycle of three main irregularities, in the Earth's orbit are the main factors initiating an ice age. These are as follows:

* The first irregularity is the tilt of the earth's axis from 22ƒ to 25ƒ which occurs in a cycle that repeats itself every 41,000 years. (A change in the earth's tilt changes the amount of heat from the sun that reaches the polar regions.)

* The second irregularity is the orbital procession which completes its cycle every 21,000 years. This determines the season at which the earth is closest to the sun during its orbit. Currently the earth is further from the sun during the northern hemisphere's summer than in the winter.

* The third cycle, with a period of 100,00 years, alters the shape of the earth's orbit, and its eccentricity amplifies or minimises the effect of the procession. This was first put forward in the 1870's by a Scottish amateur scientist, James Croll, and verified in the 1920's by a Serbian mathematician, Milutin Milankovitch. He showed that these variations were the basis for the significantly cooler summers every 21,000 and 41,000 years. These could help cause an ice age by beginning the build up of ice at the poles. The additional time it took for the icesheets to grow to their maximum sustainable size has been suggested as reason for the ice ages occurring every 100,000 years."

So every 21,000 years we are closest to the Sun in the northern hemisphere's winter, but in 5000 years it will will at fall/spring and in about 10,000 years the Earth orbit will be closest in our summer.
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~kpt/terraquest/va/ecology/ecology.html