Planet position affecting climate?

I read an article today regarding the effect that the positions of Jupiter and Venus have on the Earth's climate. Apparently when they are in a certain orbit they pull us slightly out of ours - somewhat simplified, I know, but Jupiter and Venus are currently in opposition and Jupiter is at its closest approach to Earth. As a gas giant and a planet that plays a large part in deflecting smaller objects from entering its inner orbit, we can be grateful for it. I quote excerpts from the article below:

"Every 405,000 years, gravitational tugs from Jupiter and Venus slightly elongate Earth’s orbit, an amazingly consistent pattern that has influenced our planet’s climate for at least 215 million years and allows scientists to more precisely date geological events like the spread of dinosaurs, according to a Rutgers-led study.“The climate cycles are directly related to how the Earth orbits the sun and slight variations in sunlight reaching Earth lead to climate and ecological changes,” said Kent, who studies Earth’s magnetic field. “The Earth’s orbit changes from close to perfectly circular to about 5 percent elongated especially every 405,000 years.” - Rutgers Today, 9 May 2018.

It would be interesting to know whether this is the real cause of our current climatic disasters rather than the man-made causes currently touted. I tend to agree that the universe is significantly more able to influence conditions on individual planets than a few puny humans breeding cattle for burgers.

We are certainly feeling the change in our seasons here in Cape Town, as the winter cyclonic rain pattern has altered from the galeforce northwesterlies heralding days of fairly gentle rain, to the heavy intermittent downpours coming from the southwest over the last five years or more, and the current scenario of a high pressure system remaining over the country and pushing the cold fronts southward. Torrential rain falls over the sea, teasing us as we scan the weather maps daily, only to be disappointed as just a shred of cloud sweeps overhead with scant rainfall to feed our needy dams. The promised desalination and borehole supplementation has so far not materialised and we are beginning to feel that we are being left to find our own solutions. Necessity is the mother of invention, and I for one am looking forward to some new ones.

For the moment, it looks as though filtration plants are going to become an immediate necessity, simply to render the rainwater gathering in the tanks fit for human consumption, rather than only for flushing and watering the garden. Time to bite the bullet.