Sure, but in this case what they're taking is from clouds that are over land. I have a vague memory that western US weather patterns blow in from the pacific and drop it further east over the US, so an ocean drop may not be the destiny for this particular water. But I absolutely cannot assert this with any confidence without falling into the dunning-krueger hole. Although I do know just enough about water rights to know that doing this could get messy.

The Rocky Mountains squeeze most of that water out. Here in the midwest, we get Gulf hot wet air swirling up, and cold Canadian air swirling down, and Wham! we get thunderstorms where they meet!

Curiously the water that rains on the East Coast is a sort of rolling storm of rain/evaporation/wind/rain-but-further-east. A recycling of the same bolus of water over and over again. Been going on for millions of years.

But taking water in the Rockies will have comparatively little effect on rainfall in the oceans vs immediate surrounding geographies.

The world is pretty complex - are we sure that causing less rainfall over oceans wouldn't have some weird knock on effect for the environment? Does fresh water falling on ocean surfaces contribute to the known stratification of salinity that allows some animals/plants/whatever to be able to survive in the top layer of water?

We have a problem: we're farming lettuce in Arizona. It feels a lot safer to just stop doing that then try to fix the issues with work arounds that might cause bigger issues.

I know this isnt a great counterpoint for doing more geoengineering but; we are already massively terraforming the planet from the micro to the mesoscale. Its caused untold chaos for the biosphere already. In a very real way geoengineering is the only solution. Even reducing emissions is just us toggling in the CO2 knob.

I agree that we are already massively terraforming the planet, and that there is some terraforming we should stop and dinner we should do more of.