[educating]

> TL; DR - The earth's rotation drags the tidal bulge faster than the moon's orbit slowing the earth and giving more energy to the moon which moves it into a higher orbit.

Is there no way that this is a misinterpretation of the facts? Couldn't the answer be that the Earth is losing mass through its atmosphere (into space), and due to having less mass, the moon has less gravitational pull with the Earth, and the orbit becomes larger?

[adaml_623]

A good question. However if the Earth was becoming lighter then that would affect the gravitational interaction with lots of things like satellites, passing asteroids and maybe our orbit around the Sun. I'm quite sure the change with all the satellites would be easily noticed.