Happy New Year, everyone! While I hope 2009 will bring you plenty of critical thinking and healthy skepticism, I want to gaze a little farther into the future. Four years into the future, to be exact. I hereby proclaim 2013 to be the Year of the Skeptic.

Why 2013? Well, for one reason, there are some not-so-skeptical individuals who believe the world will end in 2012. Of course, there are many ways the world might legitimately end at any given moment (if you can’t think of any, read Phil Plait‘s Death From The Skies!, and you’ll be able to think of many), but there’s no reason to think this more likely to happen in 2012 than in any other year. So when January 1, 2013 rolls in, we Skeptics will grin and be glad that we’re all still here.

Who is it, you ask, predicting that we’ll go the way of Alderaan in 2012? The most oft-cited prediction is based on the Mayan calendar, which begins time on August 11, 3114 BCE and counts up in B’ak’tun cycles of 144,000 days. The Mayans never felt the need to extend their calendars past a far-off 13th B’ak’tun, which places the end of the Mayan calendar on December 21st, 2012. Of course, the alternate prediction is that the world will simply experience a major change, rather than complete obliteration, so we might just hear proponents claiming that some event of 2012 (perhaps an election result?) fulfills the prophecy.

Of course, there’s always more. In Michael Drosnin’s epic of data mining, The Bible Code, the author jumps on the 2012 bandwagon and says the Bible encrypts a message foretelling the Earth will be hit by an asteroid or comet. At least that’s a testable hypothesis – I guess we’ll find out in a few years how successful it was. Radio host and self-described alien contactee Riley Martin predicts Earth will be transformed in 2012, and the Biaviian aliens will grant us a trip on their great mother ship.

How prevalent is the notion that the world will end in 2012? I’m not quite sure, though many people I talk to (granted, a lot of my friends are Skeptics) are aware of 2012 being the foretold end of the planet. The idea is at least widespread enough to provide the basis for an upcoming motion picture, aptly named 2012. It is directed by Roland Emmerich, who brought you such apocalyptic films as The Day After Tomorrow, Godzilla, and Independence Day. The teaser trailer poses the question, “How would the governments of our planet prepare six billion people for the end of the world?” After a Buddhist monastery is destroyed by massive waters cresting the Himalayas, it ominously answers, “They wouldn’t”.

Another reason to proclaim 2013 Year of the Skeptic is for its connection to another lapse in critical thinking, triskaidekaphobia. That’s right – the fear that causes some individuals to stay home on Friday the 13th and avoid the 13th floors of buildings (or skip the number altogether and place the 14th floor directly atop the 12th). 2013 might prove a doozy for triskaidekaphobes, as it’s mighty difficult to avoid an entire year. Perhaps it will be a great time to introduce such people to the pleasures (and reduced stress) of a skeptical worldview in which cause and effect are not trumped by correlation or the power of suggestion.

Happy 2009 to you all, and let’s get busy planning our secret handshakes and advertising campaigns for the Year of the Skeptic.

Source for 2012 prediction information: Wikipedia