They are equivalent. I note that you failed to make a detailed rebuttal, and that is because the factual data I mentioned is true.
"Only because Christmas lights are used by more people, more often. How much energy does bitcoin consume per transaction, hmm?"
It's neither about the number of users, nor about the energy per tx. My point was that people are OK to spend energy on things that are seemingly useless (shiny colorful lights, or SHA256 computation.) And in both cases, Xmas lights or Bitcoin mining, it's fine to spend the energy doing so. Because what we get in return (comfort of life, economic product) is worth the energy spent on it. So if people are OK spending 7 TWh/year on technically useless decorative lights, it is obviously OK to spend a similar amount of energy on powering a revolutionary distributed trustless financial network. Every kWh spent on Bitcoin mining not only enables transactions, but also: creates jobs, creates wealth, reduces trade friction, improves economic output, and on and on.
"what's the realistic use case where the participants are far enough apart that this matters and 10-60 minutes is so much better than a couple of days?"
Seriously? If you can't answer this question, you have never run a company (even a small company) who engages in international trade.
"Non-criminal consumers like the option of chargebacks, and non-criminal merchants accept that."
And yet reversibility hampers trade. Some business is never done with reversible CC transactions precisely because merchants can't accept the risk. Bitcoin enables them to pursue ventures that would otherwise not be doable.