Sensing a future threat: Visualizing vulnerability Joshua Trey Barnett Department of Communication University of Utah Is it possible for me to feel in my bones a threat as abstract and diffuse as global climate change? (Kirkman 2007, 26) Threat is from the future. It is what might come next. Its eventual location and ultimate extent are undefined. Its nature is open-ended. It is not just that it is not: it is not in a way that is never over. We can never be done with it. (Massumi 2010, 53) Knowledge is power? “Human interference with climate systems is occurring, and climate change poses risks for human and natural systems” (IPCC 2014a, 3). So begins Working Group II’s contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a compendium of potential impacts and adaptation strategies assembled for policy makers and publics. According to the report, impacts may include shifts in species behavior, reduced crop yields, and more extreme climate hazards, among others. In a press release accompanying the Fifth Assessment Report, IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri said, “We have the means to limit climate change . . . All we need is the will to change, which we trust will be motivated by knowledge and an understanding of the science of climate change” (IPCC 2014b). Pachauri’s statement, like the report itself, is founded on the belief that knowledge and understanding will motivate individuals and groups to change their behavior and to produce policies that are responsive