THIS USED TO BE THE FUTURE: Atlantropia

Whatever happens in the upcoming global warming/cooling events, we will surely get new good areas to live as old areas are rendered obsolete, we just have to deal with stubborn resistance to change.

Agreed. There's really nothing more reactionary than environmentalism. <G>

I was reading where some divers were checking out a sinkhole down in Florida, around Miami or something, they were down like six hundred feet or so, and started finding lots and lots of human skeletons, spearheads, stone knives, etc.

Archaeologists eventually determined that the prehistoric indians in the region had used these caves as crypts for their dead, back when they were above the water level in the midst of the last ice age, when ocean levels were about 600 feet lower than they are now. So, yeah, it's always changing, and it's always been changing. I have no doubt there were lots of people living on what's now the bottom of the Med.

The modern theory of the flood story in the bible is that it came from Babylon and was a memory of when the Mediterranean broke through the Bosphorus and flooded the Black Sea plain. They have found submerged villages in the area in the last few years that date back 12,000 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosporus

I didn't watch any of the clips above, so I don't know if I'm being redundant, but many historians agree that back in pre-history when the water level worldwide was much lower, quite a lot of the population in Europe was situated down the slopes and lowlands of the Mediterranean area before there was as much water there, and is lost under the sea now in sites impossible to investigate.  And of course when ocean levels rose and broke through Gibraltar that this could easily be the biblical reference to the great flood which would have wiped out a large amount of civilization down there.  So this dry basin idea is not really new, but is an old model of trying to restore the way it once was.

Mankind has always lived in "transition" areas, like oceanfront, river mouths and forks, lakes, valleys, etc. of which are easily lost to environment changes over time.  For example, there are old Egyptian references to towns on the coast that are now miles inland due to silt deposits from the Nile building up.  Whatever happens in the upcoming global warming/cooling events, we will surely get new good areas to live as old areas are rendered obsolete, we just have to deal with stubborn resistance to change.

Huh. That must be some kind of in-joke, since thy synopsis makes no references to Herrman Sorgel's inherent Herrman Sorgelness:

The main protagonist and narrator is Hermann Sörgel, a self-described devotee of Shakespeare. After giving a short list of works that he has written on Shakespeare, he tells the story of how he came to be in possession of Shakespeare's Memory: He meets a man named Daniel Thorpe at a Shakespeare conference, and after relating a story about a ring that had a price so high it could never be sold. Thorpe then offers Sörgel Shakespeare's memory, and after a short retelling of how he managed to get hold of it, passes it on to him. The memory, Thorpe says, has to be 'discovered': Sörgel whistles melodies he has never heard, and slowly starts seeing unknown faces in his dreams. Later, he gains insights into Shakespeare's works and techniques, and considers but decides against writing a biography. Soon after, Shakespeare's memory almost overwhelms his own: one day he becomes confused as he does not recognise engines and cars. Finally he decides to give away the memory by telephone: he phones random numbers (sparing women and children from the memory), and at last gives the memory to a man on the other end of the phone.

Lemme know if you ever crack that one. It's interesting, but I wouldn't even begin to know where to start.

Unrelated to any of that, I've always found "Herrmann" to be a very odd name. It translates to English as "Mister Man." How the heck did that one ever get off the ground, "Hi there, I'm Gary Schneider, and that's my sister, Sally Schneider, and that's our brother Mister Man Schneider. Mom and dad were going through a bad patch in their marriage when he was born. Our other brother, 'Keep Your Filthy Hands Off Me Schneider' was killed in the war..."

Hermann Sorgel must have meant something to Jorge Luis Borges: the protagonist of Borges' last short story ("Shakespeare's Memory") is named after him.

Oh, no doubt. Added to which it would create *TWO* meds: there's a high rise of land running from the heel of Italy to North Africa which would be above water, though probably he couldn't have known that.

This idea looks like an ecological disaster in the making the salinity of the ocean would increase the new shore would be a salt marsh and the effect on the tectonics of the area is unknowable. A bad idea all the way around I can see why no one liked this idea.