For two days this week, there is a place in Washington where down is up, and up is down. A place where the globe isn’t warming due to manmade emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, but where evil government-funded scientists are cooking the books to obtain more research grants.

It's a gathering where fossil fuels aren't something to be phased out, as G7 leaders decided to do this week, but rather something to be expanded in order to fight poverty.

This is the morally correct thing to do, advocates say.

You’ve come to the annual International Climate Change Conference, which this year runs Thursday and Friday, just steps from Capitol Hill.

Literature on display at the 2015 International Conference on Climate Change sponsored by the Heartland Institute in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, June 11, 2015. Image: Greg Kendall-Ball/Mashable

During the event, one can hear from a handful of leading climate skeptics on how the sun is really responsible for driving climate variability, how extreme precipitation events are just an artifact of poor data measurements and how federal scientists are manipulating data to manufacture spurious warming trends.

Most importantly, one can hear from senior Republican lawmakers about how they plan to stop the Obama administration’s climate regulations and scientific research agenda.

The conference is put together by the Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank based in Chicago, which in the past has received significant funding from the oil industry.

This year, the speakers lineup features Senate Environment and Public Works Committee chairman James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, and Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, who chairs the House Science Committee. Smith received the 2015 "Courage in Defense of Science" award from Heartland.

“I especially appreciate the Heartland Institute’s fact-checking of the Obama administration’s climate-change claims," Smith told the gathering. "We represent the new silent majority."

Materials on display at the 2015 International Conference on Climate Change sponsored by the Heartland Institute in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, June 11, 2015. Image: Greg Kendall-Ball/Mashable

The fact that the chairs of two of the committees with direct jurisdiction over climate science programs and regulations are climate contrarians is itself a remarkable change from the Democratically-controlled Congress that U.S. President Barack Obama swept into power in 2008.

Inhofe and Smith have some real power, too, since they are allied with many of their colleagues. Smith, for example, sponsored a bill that would dramatically cut federal climate research funding. Another bill that passed Smith’s committee along party lines late April would gut support for NASA’s Earth science programs, which NASA administrator Charles Bolden has denounced.

“NASA spends a lot of money researching climate change; Earth science, they call it,” Smith, who boasted that his committee cut that funding by about 40%, told the conference. “The reason we did it, there’s only one agency that is involved with space exploration; there are a dozen other agencies involved with climate change."

However, NASA operates many of the satellite programs necessary for other agencies to conduct climate research.

Responding to a questioner who advocated that Congress "cut off the money" for climate research, Smith said, “We’re trying to do what you just said."

At a time when even major oil companies such as Shell and BP are calling for governments to reach a deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions by placing a price on carbon, the conference almost seems like a relic of a bygone era, when point-counterpoint debates between climate contrarians and mainstream scientists played out on cable news and in top newspapers worldwide.

Willie Soon, astrophysicist and geoscientist, speaks as a member of a panel on climate science at the 2015 International Conference on Climate Change in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, June 11, 2015.

To listen to the speakers is like peering into an alternate universe where climate change is an evil political scheme to “grab” more power, rather than a scientific reality with roots in research that goes all the way back to the 19th century.

“We’re here to speak truth to power,” said James Taylor, senior fellow for environment and energy policy at the Heartland Institute, who has fought to roll back state renewable energy mandates that have increased the use of wind and solar power nationwide. “People talk about the social cost of carbon. But ask: What are the benefits?”

Taylor cited a shrinking of the Sahara Desert and global warming’s role in growing more plant life worldwide. “There’s more foliage throughout the planet,” he said.

Today, manmade global warming is on as solid a scientific footing as other scientific theories, including gravity and evolution. There are uncertainties about how warming and its effects will play out, particularly at local scales, but the basic fact that the world is warming due largely to human activities is accepted by the vast majority of climate scientists, world leaders and even members of the U.S. public.

The International Climate Change Conference, now in its 10th consecutive year, remains the one place where the science is vigorously contested, and strategies to combat the science are honed. This year's theme, according to the conference website, is: “Isn’t it time to start over on the question of global warming?”

It's unclear where, however, Heartland would like to start over from. Possibly never?

Climate contrarians have the gavels

What is different this year, though, is that the conference is taking place at a time when Republicans hold a majority in the House and Senate, and a majority of of Republican lawmakers are dismissive of climate science.

Literature on display at the 2015 International Conference on Climate Change sponsored by the Heartland Institute in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, June 11, 2015. Image: Greg Kendall-Ball/Mashable

In other words, the minority of dissenting researchers and allied politicians have the reins of power, and are already using it to fight the Obama administration’s ambitious Climate Action Plan, which seeks to slash U.S. global warming pollutants by 26% to 28% by 2025. For example, the EPA on Wednesday announced its intention to explore cutting emissions from large business jets and airliners, bringing fast-growing aviation under similar regulations that cars, light trucks and power plants currently face.

On Thursday morning at the conference, Senate climate skeptic-in-chief Inhofe received the "political leadership" award for his steadfast refusal to recognize mainstream climate science findings. In his acceptance speech, Inhofe said he is the only senator ever to throw a snowball on the floor of the Senate, a stunt meant to prove, well, something about global warming (he didn't say at the time, nor did he on Thursday).

“You’ve got to realize that we are winning,” Inhofe told the audience of about 250, along with a live stream audience of between 200 to 400 people, depending on the conference session. He and other speakers cited the audience figure of 80,000, but they may have been basing that on the membership numbers of various groups sponsoring the event.

Other speakers included Willie Soon, who is under investigation by the Smithsonian Institution and several academic journals for failing to reveal that funding for his work came from fossil fuel companies. Soon works for the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and has long argued that the sun, rather than carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, is controlling Earth’s climate,

Many studies have shown his work to be flawed, with dozens of studies showing that solar influences on climate change play a small role in global warming, compared to greenhouse gases. Soon said most climate scientists completely ignore the sun’s role in modulating the climate, which he called “patently absurd.”

Soon did not directly address the allegations against him, but did say he has “no axe to grind.” He compared his “independent research” favorably to those who accept government grants for their research.

Soon lauded scientists like Fred Seitz, who once chaired the National Academy of Science, but was also a shill for the tobacco industry, denying the link between smoking and cancer. Soon did not mention that part of Seitz’s biography, calling him "truly a scientific giant." Seitz died in 2008.