Right, but if you wrote "With all these cold winters, it looks like the earth isn't warming."

Wouldn't that pass more-or-less the same message? I don't see how the omission is significant, let alone "pretty misleading".

"on the surface" is used when you're either arguing the opposite or leaving the door open to being wrong because you know there is more to be revealed.

"it looks like" can be used in place of a more definitive statement. "on the surface it looks like" is almost never used that way.

> "it looks like" can be used in place of a more definitive statement. "on the surface it looks like" is almost never used that way.

It seems to me that what he is saying is, in the absence of some sort of convincing exculpatory evidence or argument that so far has not been presented, it looks like a cover-up. I don't think I agree with your analysis here.

Thanks! Not being a native speaker sometimes the nuances escape me.

I'm a native speaker and I think you're in the right. "On the surface" and "looks like" have effectively equivalent meanings and connotations, at least for me. I don't see how this headline was at all misleading.