But, if we use the transaction count as a rough analogue, and we compare energy costs for the transaction counts, We'd come to that conclusion on a stronger basis.

The sheer vapidity of the "mining gold consumes more energy" argument bodes really badly for the intellectual honesty of the BTC proponents: At root, they actually don't care about the energy cost of the blockchain, because they don't care about it being useful, as long as their speculative gain occurs.