Part of a new series examining the effects of climate change here in Massachusetts

A new WBUR poll released Wednesday finds concern about climate change among Massachusetts voters has grown dramatically.

This is the fourth time in six years that MassINC pollster Steve Koczela, who conducted the survey for WBUR (topline, crosstabs), has measured public opinion about climate change here in Massachusetts. He sees an important trend.

"The pace of the change in Massachusetts was quite surprising to me," Koczela says. "I was actually quite taken aback at it."

Back in 2011, 77 percent of the registered voters Koczela surveyed said they believed the world was getting warmer. In 2015, it was 78 percent. Now it's 88 percent — and Koczela says the public is coalescing around a cause.

"In this poll we saw a sharp uptick in the people that said that they both believe that it's happening and they believe that it's caused by human activity, at least partly."

The belief that human activities are responsible for global warming is up 11 points in just two years.

But there's still a big political divide: 78 percent of Democrats surveyed say they're already seeing the effects of climate change, compared to 51 percent of Republicans.

David Kelly, a Republican from Haverhill, was among the voters surveyed in the WBUR poll.

"You're born, you die. I think the same thing with the Earth," Kelly said. "I mean the Earth came around zillions of years ago. It just evolved and I think eventually, at some point, hopefully not in my life time, it's just a cycle."