Willie Soon, a rock star among climate change skeptics, pitched the idea of shutting down the United Nations' panel of climate change researchers on Thursday, calling it an "anti-science movement."

Soon said he would create a "place in hell" to put the U.N.'s climate science and predictions. "There will be a very special place I will create for them. Please go there. It's nonsense. Even a little kid will know this is wrong."

Soon was in Washington to discuss new findings that refute the U.N.'s predictions on the disappearance of Arctic sea ice as a result of increasing global temperatures due to manmade carbon pollution. He discussed the research and took questions from the audience as part of the Heartland Institute's annual two-day conference of climate skeptics being held this year in the nation's capital.

The conference comes as President Trump is drafting a new executive order to repeal much of the work of the Obama administration to combat manmade climate change, much of which is based on climate assessments and research from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC.

"Just close IPCC," Soon said. "Seriously, just close it," he said, in responding to a federal worker's question, asking why Soon has not met with the IPCC.

"I think you didn't see my white hair," Soon added. "I have a lot of white hair. I have tried a lot."

• Things have gotten too bad to fix: "Oh yes, we tried for years and years and years, but the strategy has become so bad that I say we just have to close IPCC. Seriously, just close it. Because they are really [an] anti-science movement," he said.

"There are too many of these people now, growing too large year-by-year," Soon said. "Every year there is just conferences ... [but] nothing has been done."

• Once a friend of the IPCC: "Second and third [climate assessment], IPCC cited my work very prominently," Soon said. "And then, all of a sudden" they stopped reaching out "because we are running out of favor, in a sense."

Soon is a regarded scientist specializing in the physics of the sun and how solar activity plays a role in the Earth's climate. He doesn't believe the data is sufficient to draw any long-term conclusion about the effects of global warming and has become a prominent figure among those who deny manmade climate change is occurring.

He has become a target of Democrats and proponents of climate change after it was found that he had received funding from pro-fossil fuel groups. Soon is a physicist at the Solar and Stellar Physics Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The New York Times in 2015 described him as one of a handful of scientists who oppose the mainstream consensus on global warming.

On Thursday, Soon cited a 1969 article by the New York Times, referring to it as a "fake news" outfit, which reported back then that sea ice in the Arctic would disappear by 1988 due to climate change.

"It's really beyond belief that we could keep believing in this sort of stuff, you know," he said. "That it's not happening, yet we still believe these people have any credibility to make any claims."

• The only federal employee in the room: The federal worker identified herself as Susan O'Toole with the Agriculture Department's animal inspection service. "I am probably the only federal worker here that follows these conferences," she said. "All of you are always quoting the IPCC, have you ever had an opportunity or attempted to bring the IPCC together so you could have a dialogue or debate together, in public, about what they are claiming and what you are claiming?"

• Set an appointment: The U.N. climate panel is "not serious about science" and "never want to talk about anything," Soon said. "I am willing to help them. Please tell IPCC to contact Willie Soon. It's very easy to find me. ... If they want to see me, come and see me. Set appointment."