The fact that some characters are debatable does not change the fact that han unification is a good idea. In a few cases you can disagree, but not unifying at all would be madness.
As for this particular character (cold), both variants are familiar to Japanese readers, with the one described as Japanese in your link being the one you'd typically see in print, while the other one is common in handwriting, and nobody in Japan would treat these two as different. From a Japanese point of view, this is definitely the kind of thing you change by switching fonts.
This pdf is the official list of basic chinese characters, published by the Japanese governement. Look on page 9, it shows both variants of this characters in hand writing.
The fact that one of the variants in not familiar to Chinese readers complicates the issue, but there are at least reasonable reasons to argue that this is one, not two, characters.
I think it is possible to argue that han unification was not done very well and that the UC made too many classification mistakes (although I personally think it is generally not that bad), but I don't think arguing that unification is a bad thing entirely has legs.
As for this particular character (cold), both variants are familiar to Japanese readers, with the one described as Japanese in your link being the one you'd typically see in print, while the other one is common in handwriting, and nobody in Japan would treat these two as different. From a Japanese point of view, this is definitely the kind of thing you change by switching fonts.
This pdf is the official list of basic chinese characters, published by the Japanese governement. Look on page 9, it shows both variants of this characters in hand writing.
http://www.bunka.go.jp/kokugo_nihongo/pdf/jouyoukanjihyou_h2...
The fact that one of the variants in not familiar to Chinese readers complicates the issue, but there are at least reasonable reasons to argue that this is one, not two, characters.
I think it is possible to argue that han unification was not done very well and that the UC made too many classification mistakes (although I personally think it is generally not that bad), but I don't think arguing that unification is a bad thing entirely has legs.