"Chris" wrote in message
. ..

I heard that the earth get warmer the further the sun is from the earth
(summer) and colder the closer it gets. So if the sun fell on the earth we
would freeze to death?

While it is true that perihelion currently occurs during
the northern winter season (at the beginning of January
in fact), the seasons themselves are due to the tilt of
the Earth's axis. The hemisphere tipped towards the Sun
is warmer than the one tipped away.

The effect on the seasons of the yearly variation of
distance to the Sun is very minor, as the Earth's orbital
eccentricity is small, 0.0167, making the orbit practically
circular. Since perihelion occurs during northern winter,
it probably serves to moderate northern winters and summers
just a very tiny bit, and make southern summers and winters
a very tiny bit more extreme.