(Update: See the comments below. Leftists are also blaming Republicans.) They’re still finding bodies in Japan, and the tsunami warming on the west coast of the United States hasn’t been lifted, yet climate alarmists are already blaming the tsunami on global warming.

So far, today’s tsunami has mainly affected Japan — there are reports of up to 300 dead in the coastal city of Sendai — but future tsunamis could strike the U.S. and virtually any other coastal area of the world with equal or greater force, say scientists. In a little-heeded warning issued at a 2009 conference on the subject, experts outlined a range of mechanisms by which climate change could already be causing more earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic activity.

“When the ice is lost, the earth’s crust bounces back up again and that triggers earthquakes, which trigger submarine landslides, which cause tsunamis,” Bill McGuire, professor at University College London, told Reuters.

The writer failed to mention that climate alarmism is big business. Of course they aren’t going to let a disaster go to waste, there’s money to be made.

The story gets even more interesting when we look back at the figures from 2005, the year before Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth launched the current wave of climate alarmism. Back then, university teachers were paid $43.16 an hour, while climate scientists were paid $54.65 an hour. In other words, climate-science compensation has risen by 30 percent in five years, while pay for other university instructors has increased by only 15 percent.

There was a time when climate scientists were not extremely well paid, but that is no longer the case. Not only have their earnings grown far faster than their colleagues’, but on an hourly basis they now earn as much as CEOs. When climate skeptics talk about a global-warming gravy train, the numbers back them up.

And it isn’t just the academics raking in the dough. The crony capitalists are doing even better.

Even more, Immelt, along with James Rogers of Duke Energy, has been among the biggest business promoters of cap-and-trade legislation. Cap-and-trade is now dead, but had it been enacted it would have been the biggest hit on the U.S. economy and on working Americans ever perpetrated by the U.S. government. Cap-and-trade would benefit many of General Electric’s businesses at the expense of American workers and consumers. This was no secret. As then-candidate Obama said in 2008, “electricity rates would necessarily sky rocket” under the proposed legislation supported by both Immelt and Obama.

Let’s not forget George Soros.

George Soros, funder of all things progressive, is starting a “green energy” hedge fund that will profit from the policies enacted by his political beneficiaries. My, isn’t that convenient?

Then there’s Al Gore.

Al Gore’s crusade for carbon emission controls is poised to enrich those with a vested interest in government regulation. It has likely made the former vice president the world’s first “carbon billionaire.” Gore and his investor pals have set up networks of private firms and nonprofits that stand to benefit from government controls despite a major international science scandal that calls into doubt the received wisdom on manmade global warming.

How shameful to try to profit off a disaster that’s brought about so much pain and suffering.

For more information on the disaster in Japan, Patterico’s Pontifications has plenty of updates. Memeorandum also has a big thread with more links.