Let's assume the event could happen anywhere between 100 days from now and 100 years from now. This gives us, roughly and without compensating for leap years for simplicity, a 36400 day span. 2012 will occupy 365 days of that span, or 365/36400 = ~1% of that period.

Basically, NASA made a blanket statement about a possible solar storm occurring at some date, and journalists are doing everything they can to force that date to be 2012 so they can play off of all of the apocalypse prophecies.