Climate change, as seen through the eye glasses of nonlinear dynamics, directed the spotlight on chaotic systems with time-dependent parameters. These systems, along their time-course, cross a sequence of chaotic and regular regimes, that can be grasped by snapshot attractors in dissipative, and by snapshot tori in non-dissipative systems. Similar phanomena can be observed in purely dissipative, autonomous dynamical systems, where total energy plays the role of the time-dependent parameter. We aim to point out that the chaotic saddles, together with their manifolds, that can be assigned with the actual energy, will define the behavior of these systems. The application of the general properties discovered in systems with time dependent parameters or in purely dissipative systems will also be pursued, on the one hand, in the investigation of the temporal and spatial modulation of tokamak electromagnetic fields, and, on the other hand, in the exploration of instability of milling processes.