David Carter. Everyone has a right to retire. That is generally understood to be the meaning of the word emeritus. Perhaps the media
activity and writing provides an extremely useful pension supplement for the professor, after all he does have some internationally recognised expertise in his field/s
Retirement could also account for the dearth of papers in the recent past.

As an aside there are a number of universities in the UK running courses on disaster causes/risk management/call it what you will.
There is a growing realisation that Lyell's principle of Uniformitarianism ,of slow uniform change, is interspersed with infrequent shortlived periods of rapid change. of which earthquakes are one manifestation. The body of work suggesting an impact terminated the Cretaceous and the recorded impact of shoemaker levy on Jupiter has caused, in recent years, what might be termed a seismic change in attitude within the earth sciences.