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The fact that 2012, the date 2012, is close to 2014 is completely a coincidence.
This up and coming solar cycle, roughly 2014, isn't going to be significantly different from the next one
and the next one, and then the previous one.
The sun is what we call and active star, and it has a cycle of activity.
Over 11 years, we go to higher activity and back down to lower activity.
So, this 11 years is fairly steady, and it has been happening through time as far as we can tell.
And we always have solar flares. Some times we have big ones, some times we have small ones.
We live on a planet with a very thick atmosphere.
So, that atmosphere stops all of the harmful radiation that is produced in a solar flare.
Even in the largest events that we've seen in the past 10,000 years,
we see that the effect is not enough to damage the atmosphere so that we are no longer protected.
Coronal mass ejections are happening on the sun all the time.
And they hit the Earth once or twice a week,
sometimes more,
and in general, the effects are minimal.
If we have a really big one, we can have a really strong aurora.
But, then it can effect satellites and power grids,
and these are the kinds of things that people who run these systems know about.
And we have warning.
These CMEs travel at speeds that mean they take probably 2-3 days to get here.
We've learned more and more about storms.
We've learned how to better predict the effects.
Where they are going to go. Where they are going to hit.
As long as we continue paying attention to it and learning more about it,
treating it like we treat a hurricane coming or a huge thunderstorm coming,
we can take appropriate measures to prepare for them.
We understand the sun well enough
with all the technology and all the science
and all of the many spacecraft we have that are monitoring it 24 hours a day,
7 days a week, to know that this stuper storm that's going to wipe out the Earth simply isn't going to happen.
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