Scientists have discovered the cause of the world’s second deadliest environmental threat after global warming. And the news really couldn’t be worse for the greenies.

It seems that Ocean Acidification is not, after all, the result of man’s selfishness and greed and refusal to amend his lifestyle. Apparently, according to New Scientist, it’s caused by those hateful Gaia-raping monstrosities we call coral reefs:

Acidic water may be a sign of healthy corals, says a new study, muddying the waters still further on our understanding of how coral reefs might react to climate change. Andreas Andersson of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, and his colleagues carefully monitored a coral reef in Bermuda for five years, and found that spikes in acidity were linked to increased reef growth. “At first we were really puzzled by this,” says Andersson. “It’s completely the opposite to what we would expect in an ocean-acidification scenario.”

Andersson’s puzzlement is understandable, given the plethora of articles over the last few years that have tried to big up ocean acidification as the “evil twin” of climate change and inevitably trying to pin the blame on man.

Some cynics have long argued that “ocean acidification” is little more than a green urban myth: a fallback position for when the man-made-global-warming theory finally collapses and another excuse is needed to justify the increasingly unjustifiable war on carbon dioxide.

(And, besides, the very phrase is a lie: the oceans aren’t turning acid. Their alkalinity is being marginally reduced, bringing the seas slightly close to neutral ph. That may sound like nit-picking, but it’s much more honest and accurate, as Willis Eschenbach explains here.)

This evidence unearthed late last year seemed to confirm it: Ocean Acidification may well turn out to be the marine version of Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick.

But this latest study on “ocean acidification” may be even worse news for the alarmists still, for it puts them on the horns of a terrible dilemma.

One of the main justifications for their hysteria about “ocean acidification” is the terrible threat it poses to our coral reefs. As Jane Lubchenko, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) told a conference in Sydney in 2012, it’s part of a “perfect storm of stressors from multiple places really hammering reefs around the world.”

If however, it turns out that coral reefs really are causing this “ocean acidification” then it may be that the only way to save them is to kill them.

Luckily the people who go into climate science and related environmental disciplines have exceptionally vivid imaginations. So they’re sure to come up with an exciting range of projections and options, modelled on state-of-the-art equipment, paid for by you and me.