The US president has been described as "basically every stupid person everywhere rolled up into one" after he suggested his country could benefit from global warming.

Donald Trump has caused anger after claiming the east coast of the US could use a bit of global warming because of its current cold spell. He tweeted: "In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year's Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!"

He has previously tweeted that the concept of global warming was "created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive". And in December 2013 he was in a "freezing" Los Angeles, prompting him to say "Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!"

Sean Spicer, former White House press secretary, told reporters earlier this year that Trump's tweets should be treated as official presidential statements, which appears to mean the official US position is that global warming could be a good thing.

It has come just days after a Trump golf course in Ireland was given permission to build a sea wall to manage erosion, which the original application revealed was partially in response to climate change and rising sea levels.

And just hours before Trump tweeted, the Capital Weather Gang, the weather arm of the Washington Post, posted that the US will be the coldest region in the world "relative to normal" over the next week. But, crucially, they seemed to preempt the president by adding: "Please note rest of world will be much warmer than normal lest anyone try to claim pocket of cold in U.S. debunks global warming, which they will invariably and irresponsibly do."

The past three years are believed to be the hottest on record. The World Meteorological Organization's secretary general, Petteri Taalas, said in November: "The past three years have all been in the top three years in terms of temperature records. This is part of a long term warming trend."

Twitter was not happy with Trump's tweet, with many pointing out the recent devastating wildfires in California showed the negative effect global warming has had on the US.

The word stupid came up a lot - including from a political scientist at the University of Kiel in Germany, who said: "That's not how it works."

Some people, including UK comedian Jason Manford, reminded Trump about the existence of winter:

If global warming does not exist because it is cold outside, does that mean the sun does not exist when it is dark?

Trump even got owned by Lisa Simpson, who once explained to her dad, Homer, that "Global warming can cause weather at both extremes - hot and cold."

And the disbelief and mockery continued:

Donald Trump Climate Change US Twitter