(Originally published in my sports page column Self-Propelled
in the January 8 to 14, 2012 issue of the Baguio Chronicle
--- a weekly newspaper based in Baguio City, Philippines.)
2012 (MMXII) is a leap year starting on a Sunday in the Gregorian Calendar. It is the 2012th year of the Anno Domini or Common Era designation, the 12th year of the 3rd millennium and of the 21st century; and the 3rd of the 2010s decade.
The United Nations General Assembly has declared 2012 as The International Year of Cooperatives, highlighting the contribution of cooperatives to socio-economic development, in particular recognizing their impact on poverty reduction, employment generation and social integration. It has also been designated as The International Year of Sustainable Energy for All.
It has also been designated The Alan Turing Year, commemorating the mathematician, computer pioneer, and code-breaker on the centennial of Turing’s birth.
There are a variety of popular beliefs about the year 2012. These beliefs range from the spirituality transformative to the apocalyptic, and center upon various interpretations of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar. Contemporary scientists have disputed the apocalyptic versions.
PREDICTED and SCHEDULED EVENTS
JANUARY 13 to 22: The first Winter Youth Olympics will be held in Innsbruck, Austria.
JANUARY 31: 433 Eros, the second-largest Near-Earth Object on record (size 13 km × 13 km × 33 km) will pass Earth at 0.1790 astronomical units (26,780,000 km; 16,640,000 mi). NASA studied Eros with the NEAR Shoemaker probe launched on February 17, 1996.
FEBRUARY 6: Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth, marking the 60th anniversary of her accession to the thrones of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and the 60th anniversary of her becoming Head of the Commonwealth.
MAY 12 to AUGUST 12: The 2012 World Expo is to be held in Yeosu, South Korea.
MAY 20: Annular Solar Eclipse. Path of annularity runs through the Pacific Ocean from northern China to California.
JUNE 6: The second and last solar transit of Venus of the century. The next pair is predicted to occur in 2117 and 2125.
JUNE 18 to 23: Turing Centenary Conference at the University of Cambridge, in honor of the mathematician, computer scientist, and cryptographer AlanTuring, the last day of the conference being the hundredth anniversary of his birth.
JULY 27: Opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics begins in London to become the first city in history to host the Summer Olympic Games three times.
AUGUST 6 to 20: Mars Science Laboratory also known as the Curiosity Rover is scheduled to land on Mars.
AUGUST 12: Closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.
NOVEMBER 13: Total solar eclipse (visible in Northern Australia and the South Pacific).
DECEMBER 21: The Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar, notably used by the pre-Columbian Maya civilization among others, completes a "great cycle" of thirteen b’ak’tuns (periods of 144,000 days each) since the mythical creation date of the calendar's current era.
DECEMBER 31: The first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ends. The Kyoto Protocol is a protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC or FCCC), aimed at fighting global warming. The UNFCCC is an international environmental treaty with the goal of achieving the "stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate change.
The Protocol was initially adopted on 11 December 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, and entered into force on 16 February 2005. As of September 2011, 191 states have signed and ratified the protocol. The only remaining signatory not to have ratified the protocol is the United States. Other states yet to ratify Kyoto include Afghanistan, Andorra and South Sudan, after Somalia ratified the protocol on 26 July 2010. In 2011, Canada declared its intention to withdraw from the Kyoto treaty.
Under the Protocol, 37 countries ("Annex I countries") commit themselves to a reduction of four greenhouse gases or GHG (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, suphur hexaflouride) and two groups of gases (hydroflourocarbons and perflourocarbons) produced by them, and all member countries give general commitments. At negotiations, Annex I countries (including the US) collectively agreed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2 percent on average for the period 2008-2012. This reduction is relative to their annual emissions in a base year, usually 1990. Since the US has not ratified the treaty, the collective emissions reduction of Annex I Kyoto countries falls from 5.2 percent to 4.2 percent below base year.
After the lack of progress leading to a binding commitment or an extension of the Kyoto commitment period in climate talks at COP 15 in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2009, there were and will be several further rounds of negotiation COP 16 in Cancun, Mexico in 2010, COP 17 in South Africa in 2011, and in Qatar in 2012 (COP 18). Because any treaty change will require the ratification of the text by various countries' legislatures before the end of the commitment period on 31 December 2012, it is likely that agreements in South Africa or South Korea/Qatar will be too late to prevent a gap between the commitment periods.
DATES UNKNOWN BUT ARE EXPECTED TO HAPPEN IN 2012
· China will launch the Kuafu spacecraft.
· The 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China will be the next major Congress of the Communist party of China.
· Pleiades, a proposed supercomputer built by Intel and SGI for NASA’s Ames Research Center will be completed, reaching a peak performance of 10 Petaflops (10 quadrillion floating point operations per second).
· Sequoia, a proposed supercomputer built by IBM for the National Nuclear Security Administration will be completed, reaching a peak performance of 20 Petaflops.
· On the Sun, the solar maximum of Solar Cycle 24 in the 11-year sunspot cycle is forecast to occur. Solar Cycle 24 is regarded to have commenced in January 2008 and on average will reach its peak of maximal sunspot activity around 2012. The period between successive solar maxima averages 11 years (the Schwabe Cycle) and the previous solar maximum of Solar Cycle 23 occurred in 2000 to 2002. During the solar maximum, the Sun’s magnetic poles will reverse.
· The Kars-Tbilisi-Baku Railway across Caucasus is scheduled to be completed.
· The first quad-core smartphones will be available.
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